1866
901.
TO HENRY FAWCETT
Jan. 1. 1866.
Dear Mr Fawcett
I have delayed long to thank you for your book, having been very busy writing, and unable to read it with proper attention until within these few days.
I think the essays must have been very interesting as lectures, and will be very useful as a book. The subject of the land laws, and laws of inheritance, is very well treated, and is one of which few feel the importance. You have broken ground very usefully on it. The considerations you have brought forward will be much needed in the discussions we shall soon have on Irish affairs, and the whole subject will become much more practical after any considerable parliamentary reform. One of the most important consequences of giving a share in the government to the working classes, is that there will then be some members of the House with whom it will no longer be an axiom that human society exists for the sake of property in land—a grovelling superstition which is still in full force among the higher classes.
I need hardly say how highly I approve your chapter on cooperation, and the restatement of the ideas of your Westminster Review article respecting Strikes. On all these subjects you have strengthened yourself by new thoughts and illustrations; and the speculations in the concluding chapter, on the possibilities of the future, open a class of considerations both new and very necessary to be thought of.
The chapter which on the whole I least like is the one on wages, though it will probably be more praised than any of the rest: but I think I could shew that an increase of wages at the expense of profits would not be an impracticability on the true principles of political economy. It might doubtless send capital to other countries; but we must recollect that the movement for higher wages and shorter working hours is now common to all the industrious nations.
There is one mistake in a matter of fact which I saw with regret in the book, and which I hope a new edition may soon give you an opportunity of correcting. You have entirely misunderstood the ateliers nationaux. They were not advances to cooperative societies, but direct payment of wages, for work mostly nominal, from the public purse; and so far were they from having any connexion with Louis Blanc or his opinions, that he has always bitterly complained of them, as having been set up, not for, but against him and his plans. The member of the Provincial Government principally responsible for them was, he says, M. Marie. The advances to associations of workmen were quite another matter, and did none of the harm which the ateliers nationaux did—probably even some good: at all events the Government could not have refused such experimental aid when the associations thought that they could not get on without it. I am not certain that such advances (resembling those the Crédit Mobilier makes to a richer class) would not sometimes be useful even now: though it is one of the lessons of the experience of that time that in most cases the associations which did without subsidies prospered the most.
There are some misprints in the volume, especially ‘married men’ for ‘monied men’ at p.209, and Arsène Haussage for Houssaye (p.103).
We shall now soon meet on our common field of battle. The two great topics of the year will be Jamaica and Reform, and there will be an immensity to be said and done on both subjects. I have just seen with great pleasure that Lord Hobart has come out decidedly in McMillan’s for Hare’s system. It is gradually taking hold of one after another of the thinking men; of whom Lord Hobart is decidedly one. I shall perhaps invoke your aid on the Metropolitan government question, of the burthen of which I shall probably have to take a considerable share.
I am Dear Mr Fawcett
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
902.
TO THOMAS HARE
Jan. 4. 1866
Dear Sir
It is a favourable sign of the impression which the idea of Personal Representation is making not only on the best thinkers but on thinking persons of all degrees that I should have received such a letter as the one I inclose. The objections to the plan proposed by the writer, you will not need me to point out; but he shews that his mind has worked on the subject, and many minds like his are probably by this time doing the same.
I was delighted to read Lord Hobart’s complete and most intelligent adhesion in the new number of McMillan. His is about the best theoretical head in the whole nobility. What a pity that he holds an office which excludes him from the House of Commons.
In a letter I have just received from M. Morin, he tells me that through the impression made by Naville, and in consequence of the victory of the Independent Party in the late elections, there is some chance of an actual trial of Personal Representation in the choice of the four deputies whom Geneva elects to the National Council of Switzerland. This, it seems, can be done by the authority of the ordinary legislature: while the mode of election of the cantonal authorities can only be changed by a Constituent Assembly, or by a general assembly of the citizens. But if the trial is made in the one case, and succeeds, its application to the other will probably soon follow. And if made at all, the trial is pretty sure to be a true and fair one, with Naville to direct it.
I begin to think that you or I may live to see the plan in actual operation in England, or at all events in America.
There are at least Hughes and Fawcett who I hope will help me to bring it before the House of Commons in the approaching discussions on reform.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
903.
TO JOHN NICOLAUS TRÜBNER
Jan. 4. 1866
Dear Sir—
With regard to the question of stereotyping the book on Comte, if I revise the book well before it is reprinted, it is hardly likely that any further alterations will be urgently required. It may, however, be desirable after a time to publish a cheap edition; but stereotyping need not I suppose prevent this as it could be done by merely lowering the price. If therefore you decidedly prefer stereotyping I have no objection. In that case I shd be obliged by your telling me what you would be disposed to give, either in the form of so much a year, or so much for every 1000 copies sold, or a sum down for a fixed number of years or of copies. It would be well also to fix some number of years, or of copies sold, after which the copyright & the stereotype plates should revert to me or my representatives.
I thank you for your offer of a payment on account, but I should prefer to wait for any payment till the accounts of the first edition are made out & the pecuniary result ascertained.
904.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Jan. 6. 1866
Dear Sir
It seems a long time since I either heard from you or wrote to you. As the time approaches when I shall be taking part in the discussion of pending questions, I feel an increasing desire to take counsel with you concerning some of them.
One is the question of the Irish Colleges. I have been drawing nearer and nearer to your view of that subject, practically considered, though I am not sure that we quite agree yet about the amount of concession required by equal justice. I shall take my stand against the denominational system in any form for Ireland—regarding it as a mere concession to practical difficulties even in England, and in Ireland inadmissible altogether. I am prepared to maintain that no public assistance ought to be given in Ireland to any education involving more or other religious teaching than exists in the mixed, or national system. I also think that in Ireland it is so great a point to bring youths of different religions to live together in colleges, as will justify almost any encouragement to the system of the Queen’s University, except that of actually refusing degrees to those who have studied elsewhere. From what I see in newspapers and hear, I am in hopes that the Catholic prelacy is shewing itself so impracticable as to give the Government a fair ground for withdrawing any offers they may have made, if only they can be induced to think such a retraction desirable: and it must be the business of members of Parliament to try to make them think so. Do you know of any member likely to lead the opposition on your side? What do you think of M’Cullagh Torrens? He, most likely, agrees with you, and he is one of the few Irishmen in Parliament who are not incumbered with an Irish constituency. Do you know what views Neate takes of the question? Any tolerable stand made in the House will have powerful support outside, from the mass of feeling in the country always ready to be called forth against any new concession to Catholics.
Then comes the Land Question. I have read several of your letters in the Economist, and admired them greatly. The generalities of the question have perhaps never before been so well stated as in your first letter. But your conclusion seems to me to fall far short of your premises. It may be that this is unavoidable. But the remedy of permitting the tenant to carry away or destroy his improvements, will surely do very little for him. It is monstrous that the law, at present, should not permit him to do this. But supposing that abominable state of the law to be altered, how inconsiderable would be the advantage to the tenant. 1st. If, as is generally the case, the landlord’s object is to clear the estate and consolidate the holdings, the tenant by pulling down his buildings is merely doing the landlord’s work gratis. 2dly. The cases most of all deserving compensation, are those in which the tenant has actually reclaimed the land: and how can he put it back into the state of heath or bog in which it was before? 3dly. Even when the improvement consisted in putting something on the farm which can be carried away such as buildings or fences—to remove them would make no return to the farmer for the labour or cost of putting them up, but would merely give him the value of the materials; and what are they? earth or rough stones: seldom worth even the trouble of carrying away. It would be his interest to accept the most trifling offer from the landlord, rather than exercise his right: unless indeed his motive was a vindictive one; and he would have but little even of that kind of satisfaction, for he could in general do the landlord as little harm as he could do himself good.
I am disposed to make a much greater claim for the tenant—to demand for him, not compensation for his outlay, but a full equivalent for the additional value which either by his labour or his expenditure he has given to the land: to be assessed either by a special tribunal or by arbitration. Justice requires no less than this, and its impracticability is not, to my mind, made out. But, as I am afraid you are of a different opinion, I should like very much to compare notes with you on the subject.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
905.
TO HENRY SAMUEL CHAPMAN
Avignon, Jan. 7, 1866
Dear Chapman
Your letter of June 18 reached me just before leaving England for Avignon, where I have been during the whole time, which, as you mentioned, Mrs Chapman and your younger children were to pass in London. I consequently have not seen them; but I shall hope to see your son who is to remain in England, as well as his brother who was already there. I have had less intercourse with your eldest son than I had hoped and intended to have, owing to the great engrossment of my time when in England by occupations which you can well appreciate: and now there is more on my hands than ever, and I have so many calls upon every moment of time that I am obliged to seem negligent of old friends, and almost to avoid making new ones. But I am not the less desirous to be of use to any one connected with you, and if I seem inattentive, it is not owing to indifference.
It must be very interesting to you to renew your knowledge of British New Zealand after an interval which bears so considerable a proportion to its short history. England has heard much of New Zealand these few years, and in a manner far from agreeable. Thoughtful people have found it hard to make up their minds on the New Zealand aspect of the universal colonial question—what to do with the aborigines. It was hoped that this would be a less desperate difficulty in New Zealand than elsewhere, on account of the higher qualities and more civilisable character of the Maoris. But the eternal source of quarrel, the demand of the colonists for land, has defeated these hopes; and it seems as if, unless or until the progressive decline of the Maori population ends in their extinction, the country would be divided between two races always hostile in mind, if not always in actual warfare. Here, then, is the burthen on the conscience of legislators at home. Can they give up the Maoris to the mercy of the more powerful, & constantly increasing, section of the population? Knowing what the English are, when they are left alone with what they think an inferior race, I cannot reconcile myself to this. But again—is it possible for England to maintain an authority there for the purpose of preventing unjust treatment of the Maoris, and at the same time allow self government to the British colonists in every other respect? How is that one subject to be kept separate, and how is the Governor to be in other things a mere ornamental frontispiece to a government of the colony by a colonial Cabinet and Legislature, and to assume a will and responsibility of his own, overruling his cabinet and legislature wherever the Maoris are concerned? If the condition of colonial government is, to keep well with the colonial population and its representatives, there is no hindering the colonists from making their cooperation depend on compliance with their wishes as to the Maoris. I do not see my way through these difficulties. Nor do I feel able to judge what would be the consequence of leaving the colonists, without the aid of Queen’s troops, to settle the Maori difficulty in their own way. Perhaps the proofs which the Maoris have given that they can be formidable enemies may have produced towards them in the colonists a different state of mind from the overbearing and insolent disregard of the rights and feelings of inferiors which is the common characteristic of John Bull when he thinks he cannot be resisted. On all these questions I am now under a special public obligation to make up my mind, and I hope to be helped to do so by your knowledge and experience. The information your letters are always full of, will be often valuable to me now.
Your account of the Middle Island and its impassable range of high Alps, is very attractive to me, and if New Zealand were an island in the Northern Atlantic, would speedily send me on a visit there. The very idea of anything impassable and impenetrable is almost too charming, now when every nook and corner of our planet has got or is getting opened to the full light of day. One of the many causes which make the age we are living in so very important in the life of the human race—almost, indeed, the turning point of it—is that so many things combine to make it the era of a great change in the conceptions and feelings of mankind as to the world of which they form a part. There is now almost no place left on our own planet that is mysterious to us, and we are brought within sight of the practical questions which will have to be faced when the multiplied human race shall have taken full possession of the earth (and exhausted its principal fuel). Meanwhile we are also acquiring scientific convictions as to the future destination of suns and stars, and the whole visible universe. These things must have ultimately a very great effect on human character. You have read Buckle’s remarks on the effect of the aspects of nature in different parts of the earth, upon the mental characteristics, and thence on the social development of the different nations. One begins to see a long vista of effects, of analogous origin but very different, on the future generations of mankind. Even without looking to anything so distant, or going beyond the proximate effects of social and economical causes already in operation, some thinkers are beginning to speculate on what will happen when the agricultural labourers of England shall have followed those of Ireland to America; and are asking themselves whether we shall have to import Chinese to supply the vacancy. The most certain result that I foresee from all this, is that English statesmanship will have to assume a new character, and to look in a more direct way than before to the interests of posterity. We are now, I think, standing on the very boundary line between this new statesmanship and the old; and the next generation will be accustomed to a very different set of political arguments and topics from those of the present and past.
I am Dear Chapman
yours very sincerely
J. S. Mill
906.
TO JOHN NICOLAUS TRÜBNER
Jan. 9. 1866
Dear Sir—
When I have disposed of the second edition of any of my books for a fixed sum, I have always hitherto had more for it than the amount of the half profit I had derived from the first. I think I might reasonably look for £70 for the second ed. of the Comte—the half profit on the first ed. to be paid when it is all sold & the £70 on the publication of the second. If you agree to this I accept your proposal regarding the remainder of the 5000 copies, on the understanding that the reduced price commences after the sale of the second thousand.
I have to thank you for sending me a number of the Contemporary Review.
Will you be so kind as to send Count Gurowski’s book to my house, Blackheath Park, at any convenient time in the course of the month.
907.
TO THOMAS HARE
Jan. 11. 1866
Dear Sir
It is not so clear to me as it is to you, that we ought to desire that the Government measure of reform should include nothing but an extension of the suffrage. No doubt there might be advantage in obtaining that first, if there were a reasonable prospect of getting anything else afterwards; but is there such a prospect? I can see none. If Bright’s doctrine is accepted by public opinion and acted on by the Government, it may be assumed as certain that no other point of parliamentary reform will be allowed to be discussed this year. No party in the House would tolerate it: whoever attempted it would speak to empty benches—would probably be counted out. And it is to my mind equally indubitable that when any reform has been passed the whole subject of changes in the representation will be tabooed for years to come. Most of the liberal members are not real reformers, and only vote for any reform because they are obliged, and in the hope of getting rid of the question. You seem to think that while the House is passing a bill confined to the one point, it might be induced to appoint a Committee to enquire into the best means of “liberating and stimulating individual thought and action.” But what is to be the inducement? Are there six persons in the House of Commons who think it any business of theirs to liberate and stimulate individual thought and action, or who would desire to do so even if they knew what it meant? How many are there even outside the House, who would support a motion for such a Committee? The small number who are already converts to your plan; not a man beside. To nobody else would such a proposal carry any distinct meaning; still less represent anything that to their minds would appear sensible or practical. I admit that our prospects are nearly as bad if Lord Russell does include something else in his bill, as if he does not. Little as the chance is of an early reopening of parliamentary reform after the bill has passed, it will probably be sooner reopened for a readjustment of seats than merely for personal representation. This I cannot deny; but in the meanwhile we lose the opportunity of discussing personal representation in the present session—an opportunity which could not be refused to us if the whole subject of representation were on the tapis, but which we certainly shall not have if the question at issue is, by a previous understanding between the two great parties, confined to the extension of the franchise. I have given you my impression on the subject; but I cannot feel complete confidence in its correctness when I see yours to be different.
I shall be delighted to read your paper in the Fortnightly Review when I return to Blackheath. Were it sent here I probably should not receive it. The Pall Mall Gazette you kindly sent, never arrived. The Daily News was stopped four times in the six days of last week; and for about two months past, we have never received both the Spectator and the Saturday Review—very often neither. What has happened to increase the rigour of the French Government to the foreign press, I do not know; but there is certainly something. You doubtless noticed the interdiction of the Indépendance Belge, and of the principal liberal German papers, and the principle on which it was rested. If that principle means anything, it means the exclusion of all my English papers, except the Times which, for reasons best known to itself, is never seized.
I agree with you about Lorimer’s book. It is merely a weaker repetition of his former one.
I shall be very desirous to discuss with you all the points of London municipal reform, in which I shall have to take an active part. Beal told me that you had sent him “a little work” of your own “full of good matter on the question.”
Helen sends her kind regards to the Miss Hares. I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
908.
TO JOHN NICOLAUS TRÜBNER
Jan. 15. 1866
Dear Sir—
I have received your letter of Jan. 12 for which I thank you & I accept all the conditions as mentioned in it.
It would have been more convenient to me to have made my corrections in the sheets of the first edition than in the proofs of the new, as I have more leisure now than I shall have a fortnight or three weeks hence; but I am willing to do whichever you prefer. If it is done from the proofs they had better be sent to Blackheath Park.
909.
TO ARTHUR LANKESTER
Jan. 22, 1866
Dear Sir—
I regret that the extreme proximity of the date at which the meeting of the Commons Preservation Society is to be held makes it impossible for me to be present. I have all my life been strongly impressed with the importance of preserving as much as possible of such free space for healthful exercise, & for the enjoyment of natural beauty as the growth of population and cultivation has still left to us. The desire to engross the whole surface of the earth in the mere production of the greatest possible quantity of food & the materials of manufacture, I consider to be founded on a mischievously narrow conception of the requirements of human nature. I therefore highly applaud the formation of the Commons Preservation Society & am prepared to cooperate in the promotion of its objects in any manner which lies in my power.
910.
TO THE ADMINISTRATORS OF THE HOSPICES D’AVIGNON
le 23 janvier 1866
Messieurs—
J’ai eu l’honneur de recevoir votre lettre du 20 janvier.
Comme il est reconnu que la coupe fréquente des arbres affaiblit et épuise leur force de végétation ce dont j’ai moi-même, dans ce pays-ci, pu faire l’épreuve, j’avais sollicité la location des arbres attenant à ma propriété dans l’espoir de les préserver d’une coupe qui est sans doute, d’usage dans le pays, mais par des motifs purement économiques par rapport au bois. J’ose encore, messieurs, vous demander la permission de conserver ces arbres, sans en faire la coupe; mais dans le cas où pour des raisons quelconques la Commission ne voudrait pas les en dispenser je lui serais très obligé si elle voulait bien permettre que je fasse tailler la moitié seulement cette année et l’autre moitié l’année prochaine.
911.
TO THOMAS BEGGS
Jan. 30. 1866
Dear Sir
I am much obliged to you for sending me your Social Science paper, and the article on Cobden —the former I had read, Mr. Storr having kindly given me a copy, but I am glad to have one from yourself. The subject of it is one of the most interesting and important of the practical matters now before the public. Many things are pointing to a strong, and I hope a combined movement for the improvement of the dwellings of the working classes which will need all our exertions to forward it. I agree with you as to the necessity of some legislative measure to facilitate the procurement of sites; and I attach the same importance as you do to enabling working classes to be proprietors of their own dwellings. I hope you are on the Committee appointed by the Social Science Association, and are in communication with Mr Hare who has, as you know, given great attention to the subject, and who [has] a particularly strong opinion on this point.
My constituents have hitherto been very forbearing with me, but those who have exerted themselves in the manner you and others have done for my election because they thought me capable of promoting practical improvements, have the best possible claim on my time and attention when they have any improvements to propose. I beg that you will never scruple to communicate with me on any matter of public interest in which you think I can be of use; and I will always either do my best to help your object, or explain and discuss with you why I am unable to do so.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
Thomas Beggs Esq
912.
TO HENRY REEVE
Jan. 30. 1866
Dear Sir
I regret that Mrs Austin should have had any annoyance or anxiety on the subject of the missing Notes of Lectures. They never were in her possession, having unfortunately been lent by me and lost by the borrower within a year or two after the Lectures were delivered.
The Notes were written next day from memoranda made by myself in the Lecture Room; and Mr Austin’s slow delivery and splendid articulation made it easy to report all the important passages nearly in his exact words. By these means I had the good fortune to preserve many valuable oral elucidations. There was only one lecture (I forget which one) at which I was unable to be present, and in that case Mr Austin kindly lent me his manuscript to enable me to fill up the vacancy. I never saw the MS of any of the others, nor did he see any of the Notes.
I am happy that the unusual length of my article is not an insuperable obstacle to its insertion.
The proofs should be sent to Blackheath.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
913.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Jan. 31. [1866]
Dear Sir
Your letter reached me late, owing to my having left Avignon before it arrived. I am most desirous to confer with you on the critical state of things respecting the education question, but I suppose I shall scarcely now be able to see you until we meet at the Political Economy Club on Friday. We can then fix a time and place for further talk.
If the ministers do not take care, they will commence the breaking up of their party by this measure.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
914.
TO [MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY?]
Jan. 31. 1866
Dear Sir
The inclosed passage is the one which Mr Wendell Phillips seems to have had particularly in view. The remainder not only of the Preface, but of the book, may be regarded as a commentary on it.
I had already read the article in Harper’s Magazine —I need hardly say with how much pleasure and had guessed, though not with full assurance, its authorship.
I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
915.
TO GEORGE GROTE
Feb. 4. 1866
My dear Grote
Unless I write now to thank you for your admirable article in the Westminster Review, I do not know when I shall be able to do so, as my time is already taken up, to a degree which you can very well understand both from theory and experience, though my constituents have hitherto given me very little trouble of any kind, and that little only for important objects. I write, then, while I can, to express some part of the pleasure it gives me that one whose good opinion and good feeling I value more than that of any other living man, should be able to write about me in the way you have done. I thank you, too, most heartily, for the justice you have done to my father. When your Kleine Schriften come to be collected, that passage will remain as one of the weightiest testimonies to his worth, and to the place he filled in his generation.
As to the points of difference between us on some minor matters of opinion, which occur in the course of the article, it will be a pleasure to talk them over with you some day. There is only one of them on which I yet see myself to have been wrong, viz. when I spoke of a beginning without a cause as being inconceivable by us. Of course, however, I did not mean inconceivable by a law of the mind, but only by an acquired association.
Have you seen Mansel’s critique (for I am told it is his) in Nos 1 and 2 of a new publication called the Contemporary Review? I should like much to know what you think of it, if you have read it.
My article on the Plato is in Reeve’s hands and accepted by him; which is a relief to me, as its length so much exceeds the usual Edinburgh Review dimensions, that I feared he might be unwilling to insert it without an impossible curtailment. I have seldom given so much time and pains to a review article, but it has been well employed if I have done any tolerable justice to the subject.
With our kind regards to Mrs Grote I am my dear Grote
yours ever truly
J. S. Mill
916.
TO HERBERT SPENCER
Feb. 4. 1866.
Dear Sir:—
On arriving here last week, I found the December livraison of your Biology, and I need hardly say how much I regretted the announcement in the paper annexed to it. What the case calls for, however, is not only regret, but remedy; and I think it is right you should be indemnified by the readers and purchasers of the series for the loss you have incurred by it. I should be glad to contribute my part, and should like to know at how much you estimate the loss, and whether you will allow me to speak to friends and obtain subscriptions for the remainder. My own impression is that the sum ought to be raised among the original subscribers.
In the next place, I cannot doubt that the publication in numbers, though it may have been the best means that presented itself at the time, has had an unfavourable effect on the sale, and that a complete treatise with your name to it would attract more attention, obtain more buyers, and would be pretty sure to sell an edition in a few years. What I propose is that you should write the next of your treatises, and that I should guarantee the publisher against loss, i.e., should engage, after such length of time as may be agreed on, to make good any deficiency that may occur, not exceeding a given sum, that sum being such as the publisher may think sufficient to insure him. With this guarantee you could have your choice of publishers, and I do not think it likely that there would be any loss, while I am sure that it could in no case be considerable. I beg that you will not consider this proposal in the light of a personal favour, though even if it were I should still hope to be permitted to offer it. But it is nothing of the kind—it is a simple proposal of cooperation for an important public purpose, for which you give your labour and have given your health.
917.
TO EDWARD WELMISLEY
Feb. 4. 1866
Sir
In reply to your letter of Jan. 31, I beg to express my willingness to take charge of the Bill for carrying into effect the arrangement which appears to have been made between the Government and the other parties interested.
I am Sir
very faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
Edward Welmisley Esq.
918.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Feb. 7. 1866
Dear Sir
To take your last subject first. I have of late avoided giving my name to any of the Working Classes’ Exhibitions, as it seems to me that the thing is rather overdone; so many of these Exhibitions are now attempted that they stand in each other’s way, are apt to be unsuccessful in a pecuniary sense, and excite but little of the interest which was felt about the first things of the kind. If it would oblige you that I should give my name to the North London Exhibition I will very willingly do so on that account; but there is very little chance that my daughter and I can be present at the opening, or at any time during the exhibition, as we are almost sure to be abroad at the time.
Allow me to congratulate you on being Editor of the Family Paper, both as a rise in your position, and a great increase in the comfort of your daily work. I thank you for the pleasant things you have written about me in the Sydney Morning Herald, and for the letter on reform which you purpose addressing to me: Would it not be worth while to write it so that it might be published either in the Family Paper, the Working Man, or somewhere else? as a statement of the ideas of the best part of the working classes on reform would be important and interesting to many persons besides me.
Many thanks for the cuttings. I have seen Mr Conway’s article and the one in the Contemporary Review. The Blackwood I have not seen but expect to see.
With our kind remembrances to Mrs Plummer
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
919.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Feb. 10. 1866
Dear Chadwick
I shall be happy to see you at the House at three on Monday, or at any time after four—as the debate being on the Cattle Plague, I shall not feel bound to pay any special attention to it.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
920.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
Feb. 13. 1866
Dear Sir
Your news is very important, and the move of the Presbyterian body promises well, if the Government is not yet irrevocably committed. I, on my side, have talked with Mr Grant Duff, who said he could hardly believe that the Government can meditate such a step as the one we apprehend. Not a single Scotch member (he said) would vote with them, and (he added) as their enemies are keenly watching to take the first opportunity of putting them in a minority they would probably be obliged to resign. The result of this and of much other information that reaches me, is to make me apprehensive that we may be more successful than we desire, and may perhaps break up the Ministry and lose the Reform Bill. This is not a sufficient reason against fighting the question of the Colleges to the utmost; but I attach great importance to not being supposed to have the smallest approach to an understanding or concert with those who will merely use our question as a means of effecting purposes which we should greatly lament. Nothing can be more proper than that you should apply to any and every influential politician whom you can get access to; but I am very anxious not to be held out to any one, even to sincere liberals, and much less to false liberals or Tories, as desiring to communicate with them on the subject. I have no objection to its being said to any person whatever, that I have a very strong opinion against the proposed changes. If any M.P. (even a Tory) chooses to open the subject to me, I will tell him my mind. One or two members have already done so; Mr Lowe did so the very day I saw you, and I thought he seemed disposed to take the initial step (by putting a question to the Government) without any further parley or consultation with us and our liberal friends. It is most clear to me that we, meaning myself and the other liberal members you mention, should endeavour to act directly on the members of the Government, and should avoid even the appearance of concert with any of those who would like to do them an ill turn. With regard to Sir Hugh Cairns, or any one on that side of the house, whatever they may choose to do should be quite apart from us. The same political instinct which influenced Lord Stanley, would probably make them feel that they had better appear as seconders than as originators of a move on this subject.
Many thanks for the pamphlet, which will be very useful to me.
I need scarcely say that this letter is confidential to yourself.
I am Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
921.
TO THE SPEAKER’S SECRETARY
Feb. 22, 1866
Sir,
I have had the honour of receiving an invitation to dine with the Right Honble the Speaker on Wednesday next Feb 28 but beg that I may be allowed to excuse myself from accepting it as I think it desirable that those members of the H. of C. who do not approve of the regulations in respect to dress at present in force should make their objection known to the Speaker, who I do not doubt will give to it whatever weight is justly due. I sincerely hope that in taking this mode of expressing the objection which I entertain to the practice hitherto followed I shall not be considered to be wanting in that respect and deference to the Rt Hon the Speaker which it is as much my wish as my duty invariably to observe.
922.
TO FREDERICK MILNES EDGE
Feb. 26, 1866
Dear Sir—
I have to acknowledge a letter from you dated Feb. 15 asking me to explain a passage of my Principles of Pol. Economy in which I express the opinion that a protecting duty, for a limited space of time, may be defensible in a new country, as a means of naturalizing a branch of industry in itself suited to the country but which would be unable to establish itself there without some form of temporary assistance from the state. This passage you say has been made use of by American protectionists as the testimony of an English writer on Pol. Economy to the inapplicability to America of the general principle of free trade. The passage has been used for a similar purpose in the Australian colonies, erroneously in my opinion but certainly with more plausibility than can be the case in the U. States; for Australia really is a new country whose capabilities for carrying on manufactures cannot yet be said to have been tested: but the manufacturing parts of the U.S., New England & Pennsylvania, are no longer new countries; they have carried on manufacturing on a large scale, & with the benefit of high protecting duties for at least two generations; their operatives have had full time to acquire the manufacturing skill in which those of England had preceded them; & there has been ample experience to prove that the inability of their manufactures to compete in the American market with those of Great Britain does not arise merely from the more recent date of their establishment, but from the fact that American labour & capital can in the present circumstances of America be employed with greater return & greater advantage to the national wealth, in the production of other articles. I have never for a moment recommended or countenanced any protecting duty except for the purpose of enabling the protected branch of industry, in a very moderate time, to become independent of protection. That moderate time in the U. States has been exceeded, & if the cotton or iron of America still need protection against those of the other hemisphere it is in my eyes a complete proof that they ought not to have it, & that the longer it is continued the greater the injustice & the waste of national resources will be.
I confine myself on the present occasion to the one special point which you have referred to me & do not enter into the fallacies of Protectionism generally or of American Protectionists in particular. But since you pay me the compliment of thinking that what is said on the subject in my Pr. of P.E. is read & listened to by some Americans, I beg to recommend to your notice the further explanations which I have added to the passage quoted by you in the last published (the People’s) edition of that work. I have directed the publisher to send you a copy & if the important journal with which you are connected, is pleased to attach any value to my opinion on the subject, that opinion will be found much more completely stated, with additional replies to Protectionist arguments in pp. 556 to 558 of the People’s edition.
F. Milnes Edge.
923.
TO MONTAGUE RICHARD LEVERSON
Feb 26 1866
Dear Sir,
I have gone through the Draft of a Bill, and I think it does you very great credit, containing some very valuable provisions respecting the mechanism of representative institutions. I also highly applaud the stand you have made for universal instead of manhood suffrage. As, however, several of the general principles on which the plan is founded, particularly ballot and electoral districts, are opposed to my opinions, I think it best not to connect myself in any way with the movement, and do not wish to have any letter of mine read at the Conference. The authors of the plan may be fully assured of my zealous cooperation on all the points on which their opinions and my own coincide.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly,
J. S. Mill
Montague Leverson Esq.
924.
TO WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
March 6. 1866
My dear Sir
I have just had the pleasure of receiving from you and Mrs Gladstone a card of invitation for Wednesday the 21st. There are few things I more value than the opportunity of cultivating the degree of personal acquaintance to which you have done me the honour of admitting me; but I find it absolutely necessary, just at present, to avoid all engagements on the evenings which attendance in the House leaves me for other indispensable purposes. I hope to be allowed to indemnify myself on Thursday mornings after Easter for my present abstinence. I am
My dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
The Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone M.P.
925.
TO WILLIAM LONGMAN
March 17. 1866
Dear Sir—
Your idea of a collected edition of my writings has much to recommend it, & I have sometimes thought of such a thing myself, but was inclined to think that the most suitable time would be after my death, as I am likely, so long as I live, to make material improvements in every new edition of my larger works. This objection however might be got over. But do you not think that the publication of such a series—each volume of which would of course be obtainable separate from the others—would almost entirely stop the sale of the current library editions of which, in the case of the Logic & Pol. Econ. the greater number of the copies are still on hand. Would it not, therefore, be best to adjourn the project of a collected edition until these editions are nearly sold?
It is satisfactory to find that the People’s Editions have not so much damaged as might have been expected the sale of the library editions. But the edition you propose would probably compete with the library editions much more successfully.
926.
TO J. GEORGE MAWBY
Blackheath-park, March 17, 1866
Sir—
I have to acknowledge your note of the 11th instant. I have received many communications on the same subject from working men, and it gives me much satisfaction to find that so great a number of them are in the habit of giving intelligent attention to the foreign policy of the country. The question, which is the subject of your communication, is encumbered with great difficulties; and though if Mr. Gregory had divided the House I should have voted against him, I am not satisfied that the immunity of private property from capture would not on the whole be for the advantage if the Declaration of Paris must be maintained.
I agree with you in thinking this last the really important question, and I am decidedly of opinion that the relinquishment by the naval Powers of their most powerful weapon of defence against the great military Powers, can only be defended if it be true that the change of circumstances has made that weapon one which could no longer safely be used.
I am, Sir, yours faithfully,
J. S. Mill
Mr. Mawby
927.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT
March 23. 1866
Dear Sir
I start for Avignon tonight, but if it should be the opinion of my friends in Westminster that a public meeting should be held during the recess for the purpose of making a demonstration in support of the Reform Bill I shall hold myself ready to return at a day’s notice in order to take part in it.
Probably however it may be thought that the first day after the recess, Monday 9th April, will be as good or even a better day for a political meeting in a Metropolitan district, than any day during the recess. Whatever may be determined on this point, I am in the hands of my friends.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
Alderman Salomons has asked me for a copy of the Bill, which I suppose you will give him as a matter of course. If it suited your plans to send one also to Mr P. A. Taylor, who has asked me for a copy, it would give me pleasure.
928.
TO THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
March 24, 1866
Dear Sir
I return the paper with my signature added, and am happy to join in the plan proposed for enabling Mr Spencer to continue the publication of his philosophical writings.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
929.
TO JOHN CAMPBELL
April 4, 1866
Dear Sir—
The supposition that I approve of the bill empowering Govt to make loans for the improvement of the dwellings of the working classes is quite correct. If I thought that such a measure would injure the independence of the working classes or encourage their improvidence I shd strenuously oppose it. But the case seems to me to be one of a class of cases in which people require artificial help, to enable them afterwards to help themselves. The taste for better house accommodation has still to be created: & until it is created, private speculation will not find its account in supplying that improved accommodation. The aid of Govt is often useful, & sometimes necessary, to start improved systems which once started are able to keep themselves going without further help. I support loans from the public for the purpose in question (which is still more important morally than even physically) as I would support similar loans for the purpose of creating peasant proprietors, or (if necessary for the purpose) in aid of colonization. I think however that the loans ought not to be accessible only to Town Councils, but also to building companies or private capitalists under strict conditions & on proper security; and the Bill introduced by the Govt gives, I believe, the power of making such advances.
930.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
April 9. 1866
Dear Sir
Your note of the 29th reached me at Avignon, but I could not answer it until my return here enabled me to tell you if Mr Sullivan’s pamphlet had been sent to me or not. I find that it has, and I have lost no time in reading it. After doing so, my opinion decidedly is that it requires an answer. It is written with some ability, and knowledge of detail; it does not manifestly exhibit want of candour, and as it makes some points on matters of fact, with apparent success (though none which are essential to the question) it will be largely used in the discussions, and will be represented as a complete answer to you and Whittle. There should, I think, be a reply to it in print if only to supply those who fight the battle in Parliament with answers to what will be brought against them. The fight will be a more arduous one than we thought; for several of the leading Tories, in the debate on Tests, shewed a disposition to adopt denominational instead of mixed education, and exhibited a decided sympathy with the movement of the Catholic bishops. If you reply, I have not the least objection to its being, as you propose, in the form of a letter to me.
I am obliged to stop short, being very busy, as you may suppose at such a time as this.
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
931.
TO THOMAS CARLYLE
April 11, 1866
Dear Carlyle—
My answer to your note respecting Dr Löwe has been delayed by the necessity of finding time to rummage old papers in order to ascertain whether an impression I had of having already consented to a similar proposal from some other quarter, was well founded or not. I now find that in December 1861 I gave my assent to a translation of my book on Repr. Govt by a Dr F. A. Wille, who like Dr Löwe, had been engaged in the political events of 1848 & had for ten years afterwards been living in Switzerland. Dr Wille then informed me that his translation was partly printed & I am almost sure that it was published in the course of the following years. If a copy was sent to me I have it not at hand, but Dr Löwe could probably inform himself on the subject without difficulty. Dr Wille’s address at that time was Mariafeld (sic), Meilen, Zürich.
Please thank Mrs Carlyle for her remembrance of me. I have been sorry to hear a rather poor account of her health & to see by your Edinburgh address that your own is not quite satisfactory.
932.
TO THE EARL OF CLARENDON
April 15, 1866.
My Lord,
I have had the honour of receiving your communication of the 9th inst. and am much gratified that the small offering which I had the opportunity of making to the London Library should have appeared to the Committee deserving of such an acknowledgment. It is probable that I may continue to receive from private friends or public authorities in the United States books and documents of a similar character to those which I had the pleasure of presenting, and since they are considered to be of value to the Library, I shall have great satisfaction in forwarding them as they arrive. A few have been discovered which were overlooked when the parcel was sent, and these I will at once despatch to the Librarian.
I have the honour to be your Lordship’s most obedient Servant,
J. S. Mill
933.
TO SAMUEL SULLIVAN COX
April 15, 1866.
Dear Sir
On my return to England I did not forget the promise in my letter of Dec. 21, but addressed myself to one of the highest statistical authorities in this country, Mr Newmarch, the associate of Mr Tooke in the later volumes of his admirable History of Prices, and a man of mark among our economists; that he is a warm freetrader I need not say. Mr Newmarch has furnished me with some publications in which you will find a great deal of the information you want respecting the operation of free trade in this country, and with a full review of the commercial history of the last year, forming a Supplement to the Economist newspaper of March 10, and written by himself. These I will immediately send (probably through Mr Trübner) to the New York address you gave me. I fear the unsatisfactory state of the reconstruction question, and the differences between Congress and the President, may delay for some time the progress which might otherwise have taken place more rapidly on the freetrade question. But every awakening of the national mind is sure to be favourable to the removal of prejudice; and I have no doubt that, if not a complete, yet a very considerable reform of the legislation on this subject, will before many years reward the exertions of yourself and the other enlightened men who have taken up the cause.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Hon. S. S. Cox
934.
TO WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
April 21. 1866
My dear Sir
I thank you very much for your kind invitation for Wednesday May 2, but I still find so much need of repose on the evenings on which the House does not sit (when those evenings are not absorbed by other necessary occupations) that I do not yet venture to accept an invitation for any evening. But if your Thursday mornings have commenced, I should have great pleasure in soon availing myself of one of them.
I venture to ask your acceptance of the inclosed paper (printed in the current number of the Edinburgh Review) the subject of which I know to be interesting to you, whatever may be the case with the execution. I offer it, not forgetting how long it must wait before you are likely to be able to give it even a cursory glance. I am
My dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
935.
TO GEORGE GROTE
April 22. 1866
My dear Grote
You may well conceive what a gratification it is to me to find that you are so well satisfied with my attempt to condense into an article the principal ideas of your book. You had left so little to be done that the greatest success I could hope for was to throw in a sufficient number of fresh citations and illustrations and to put sufficient originality into the mode of turning the expression of your thoughts, to enable my repetition of them to have in some small degree the value of a confirmation by an independent inquirer.
Was I not lucky in being able to quote so capital a Platonic passage from Max Müller?
I suppose you have read the review of your book in Fraser which was unfortunately the last production of Dr Whewell. So far as he differed from you he always seemed to me to be wrong; but it was very pleasant to see that, having some real knowledge of the subject, he gave so complete and so intelligent an adhesion to your novelties of opinion respecting the Sophists.
With our kind regards to Mrs Grote I am
My dear Grote
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
936.
TO HENRY PITMAN
Blackheath Park, April 27, 1866
Dear Sir,—
A Liberal county member, to whom I have been speaking about the Suffolk experiment in Agricultural Co-operation, is very desirous to know more about it. I could not remember to what numbers of “The Co-operator” to refer him; but if you would kindly inform me of that, or of any other source of information which it would be well for him to consult, you would do, I think, a useful service to the cause.
I should be very glad if you would, at the same time, tell me how matters go on with yourself and “The Co-operator.”
As I know the great expense you are put to for postage, I take the liberty of enclosing a stamped envelope.—I am, dear Sir, very truly yours,
J. S. Mill
937.
TO WILLIAM LONGMAN
April 28. 1866
Dear Sir—
Your report of the sale of the books is extremely satisfactory—in the case of the book on Hamilton even embarrassingly so —for several elaborate criticisms & replies to it having appeared since the publication of the 2d edit. there will be a great deal to do by way of preparation for a third, whether this is published separately or as part of the collected edition you propose.
In regard to the collected edition the difficulty occurs to me, that it cannot at present be complete in consequence of the interest which Mr. Trübner has in the reprint of the essays on Comte. This seems to be a reason (in addition to others) for at least postponing the project until the sale of the book on Comte has considerably slackened, which it is sure before long to do; I am at present inclined to put off the subject & to take it into consideration a year hence with a view to Jan. 1st 1868 instead of 1867.
938.
TO WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
May 1 [1866]
My dear Sir
As I mentioned to you my intention of availing myself of your kind invitation next Thursday morning, I think it best to tell you that I have a severe attack of influenza, to get rid of which I am told that I must confine myself to bed. I am afraid therefore I shall not only lose the pleasure of seeing you on Thursday morning, but what I regret still more, that of hearing your financial statement. I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
939.
TO THOMAS HARE
May 4. 1866
Dear Sir
I return Mr. Rathbone’s sensible letter. He certainly had every reason to presume that you would have influence with me or with any one else who knows you. But I have been obliged to answer Mr. Crosfield’s letter by a refusal, being compelled to refuse all engagements, and to put off even St. Andrews till next winter.
I am better, and hope to be at the House on Monday and at the Committee if summoned; but as I am practically examiner in chief in the present passing stage of the business, it is not unlikely that Ayrton will not summon the Committee until he has assured himself that I can be present.
I am ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
940.
TO HENRY PITMAN
Blackheath Park, May 4, 1866.
Dear Sir,—
Many thanks for the pamphlets, which will be of the greatest use to Mr. Acland (the county member I mentioned), and perhaps to others.
The news of the Wolverhampton Plate-Locksmiths is most gratifying, and a fine example of what Co-operation can do.
Though I do not agree, so far as compulsory measures are concerned, with the U. K. Alliance, yet, since you do, I congratulate you on having obtained a sure income, compatible with the continuance of your most valuable services to Co-operation.—I am, dear Sir, yours very truly,
J. S. Mill
H. Pitman, Esq.
941.
TO CAROLINE E. LIDDELL
6th May 1866
Madam,—
I am happy to hear that you and other ladies are disposed to assert your just claim to be represented in the body that taxes you, and I recommend to you to lose no opportunity of doing so. When men who wish to remove the invidious distinctions under which you labour offer arguments founded on the evident justice of your cause, we are constantly met by the reply that ladies themselves see no hardship in it, and do not care enough for the franchise to ask for it. I am glad to be able to say that I know several members of Parliament who wish to grant the franchise without distinction of sex, but I know many more who would be ashamed to refuse it if it were quietly and steadily demanded by women themselves. I am sorry to find that you disclaim being strong-minded, because I believe strength of mind to be one of the noblest gifts that any rational creature, male or female, can possess, and the best measure of our degree of efficiency for working in the cause of truth. But such mental powers and energies as we any of us do possess, ought to be employed in striving to remove the evils with which circumstances have made us acquainted; and a woman who is a taxpayer is the most natural and most suitable advocate of the political enfranchisement of women. I hope, therefore, that you will endeavour to strengthen the hands of those (and I know more than one) who have devoted their lives to working in your cause, by protesting against the injustice you suffer, whenever and wherever you can, both in society, and when occasion offers in public. If you could yourself write a petition (almost in the terms of your letter to me), and procure as many signatures to it as you can, I should be happy to present it to Parliament.
942.
TO JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY
May 6th, 1866.
Dear Sir,
I am afraid you must have thought hard things of me for being so slow in answering your very friendly and most interesting letter of February 1st. Had your introduction to Mr. Holmes not already been sent, but depended on my answer, I should have written at once, if even only a line, to say how glad I should be both to see and know him, both as his father’s son, as your friend, and as one whose personal history has already been such as your letter intimates. Among the countless and inexhaustible blessings which you, from your national struggle, will in the end bring forth for the human race, it is one of the greatest that they have behind them so many who, being what your friend was, have done what he has done. Such men are the natural leaders of the democracy of the world from this time forward; and such a series of events, coming upon minds prepared by previous high culture, may well have ripened their intellects, as it cannot but have fitted their characters, for stepping into that vacant post and filling it with benefit to the world.
The new struggle, in which you are now engaged, that of reconstruction, is well fitted to carry on the work of educating the political mind of the country. I have learnt to have great trust in the capability of the American people at large (outside the region of slavery) to see the practical leanings of a political question truly and rapidly when the critical moment comes. It seems to me that things are going on as well and as fast as could be hoped for under the untoward accident of getting an obstinate Southern man, a pro-slavery man almost to the last, in the position of President. But the passing of the Civil Rights Bill over his head seems almost to ensure the right issue to the contest. If you only keep the Southern States out of Congress till they one by one either grant negro suffrage or consent to come in on the basis of their electoral population alone, they may probably then be let in in safety. But the real desideratum (in addition to colonization from the North) is the Homestead law which you propose for the negroes. I cannot express too strongly the completeness of my agreement with all you say on that point. Compared with these great questions, free trade is but a secondary matter; but it is a good sign that this also has benefited by the general impulse given to the national mind, and that the free traders are raising themselves for vigorous efforts. I am not anxious that this question should be forced on while the others are pending; for anything which might detach the Western from the Eastern States, and place them in even partial sympathy with the South, would at present be a great calamity.
I have often during the years since we met in Vienna wished that I could talk with you, but always found something more urgent to do than to resort to the unsatisfactory mode of communication by letter, and this is still more the case now that I have allowed new and onerous duties to be placed upon me. They are not nearly so agreeable to myself, and it remains to be seen whether they will be as useful as that of writing out my best thoughts and putting them into print. I have a taller pulpit now, but one in which it is impossible to use my best materials. But jacta est alea, I must make the best I can of it; and I have had thus far much more of what is called success than I could have hoped for beforehand.
I am, dear Sir,
Ever sincerely yours
J. S. Mill
943.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
May 11 [1866]
Dear Sir
I am much better, and am now attending the House, but as I do not go there every day, and on Mondays and Thursdays have to attend a Committee from 12 to 4, it is difficult to make an appointment at the hour you mention. At present Tuesday is the first day I can mention, and that is uncertain, but if you do not hear from me previously, you will find me at the House on Tuesday at three. I am
Dear Sir
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
944.
TO MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY
May 15. 1866
Dear Sir
Will you and Mrs Conway do us the pleasure of coming down and dining with us on Sunday week (May 24th)? We dine at five, and there is a train from Charing Cross at 4.5 P.M.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
945.
TO EDWARD OWEN GREENING
May 18th 1866
I beg to acknowledge your letter of the 10th inst. inviting me to a Soirée to be held tomorrow, in celebration of the 1st. year’s successful working of the new limited liability company, “Greening & Co.” I regret my inability to attend on this interesting occasion; but beg to be allowed to express my warm approbation of the principle of associating all the persons employed by the Company, in the profits of the undertaking, and my congratulations on the success which has already attended your application of that principle.
946.
TO JOHN A. LEATHERLAND
May 19. 1866
Dear Sir
I beg to apologize for the delay in answering your note. I am greatly honoured by the opinion you express of my writings, and had I the necessary leisure, should be happy to read your volume of poems, as you wish me to do so.
My time however is so much occupied that I am obliged to defer looking at much that is sent me in those departments of literature to which I give most attention and I fear therefore it will be impossible for me to give the attention to your poems which you wish.
I am Dear Sir
yrs faithfully
J. S. Mill
Mr. J. A. Leatherland
947.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT
May 19 [1866]
Dear Sir,—
I entirely approve and applaud the object of the meeting to be held on Monday next on Primrose-hill —that of encouraging and strengthening the Government in resisting all compromise in the leading provisions of the Reform Bill. I am greatly obliged by your very cordial invitation to attend the meeting, but my absence from town will prevent my being present at it.
I am, &c.,
J. S. Mill
948.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
May 21. 1866
Dear Chadwick
I am much obliged to you for the documents you forwarded and I hope to make good use of them.
I had no opportunity before leaving town of making the inquiries about Carlisle and Bristol, but I will do so as soon as I can.
The Commission respecting Middle Class Schools seems to be much in need of information and suggestions that you could give them. I have been talking with Acland, one of the members of the Commission, and found that he knew absolutely nothing of what had been done at Faversham. He promised that he would look up the case, which must have been reported on by one of their Assistant Commissioners. I could not remember where your account of it was, which I read with such extreme interest when it came out. Could you not write them a short letter, or send them papers about it, or, as the next best thing, cram me on the subject, for I am threatened with having a set of questions sent to me from them, which would be much better sent to you.
I am
Yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
Write to Blackheath as usual.
949.
TO EARL GREY
May 21. 1866
My dear Lord
The Reform Bill of the Government is no doubt a kind of makeshift which it would be difficult for persons of my opinions to defend as being the best thing in itself, and in the detail of which many improvements might be suggested, if it could be done without damaging the chance which the Bill has of getting through Parliament. Among other things, representation of minorities would be an immense improvement in this, as it would in any other scheme of representation. But supposing it desirable that such a proposal should be made in the House of Commons, I am not the right person to make it, in the shape to which you give the preference. If I were to originate any move for representation of minorities, it could only be in the form which alone, as I conceive, carries out the principle, that of Mr Hare’s system; which I believe to be practicable, though I am aware that you are of a different opinion. My inability to originate a proposal for the cumulative vote plan (which I regard as the next best) would be no hindrance to my supporting it if proposed by others. But I could only do so in the cases in which the constituency returns three members. There is, no doubt, much truth in your remark that where the two parties are of nearly equal strength, there is less injustice in giving one member to each than two members to the one which is slightly the most numerous, and none at all to the other. But it seems to me indispensable in the future interest of the principle of representation of minorities (which is particularly liable to be misunderstood and misrepresented) that a broad line should be drawn between it and any plan which makes a minority politically equal to a majority; and that this last should be absolutely disclaimed, as going beyond and in opposition to the principle. Unless this is done, the democrats of the old one-sided school will succeed in making the principle unpopular as an aristocratic contrivance to neutralise the extension of the franchise: though in truth it is exactly as much democratic as aristocratic, its effect being to limit the tyranny of the strongest power, whatever this happens to be.
I do not see, therefore, how I can in any direct way promote the object you have in view. I am
my dear Lord
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
The Earl Grey.
950.
TO THOMAS BEGGS
May 25. 1866
Dear Sir
Your note of May 22 followed me into Somersetshire. Having ascertained that I should not be wanted in the House on Thursday or Friday, I gave myself a whole week’s holiday in the only form in which a holiday does me any good, by long walks through beautiful scenery. I am sorry that you and your friends will have had the trouble of going to the House on Thursday to no purpose; but I shall be there on Monday, and every subsequent day for some time.
I should have been much surprised if you, having attended to Irish affairs, had come to any other conclusion about them than the one you express in your letter. I am very happy that you think my speech calculated to do good. The writer of the article you inclosed (for which I thank you) has well seized the leading points. But he is mistaken in saying that the speech was a surprise to the Irish members. The leaders of the National Party knew my opinions and offered, more than ten years ago to bring me into Parliament for an Irish County on purpose to advocate them. He is also mistaken in thinking that the Tory leaders went away to show disrespect to me. They went away because it was long past dinner time.
I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Thomas Beggs Esq.
951.
TO WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
May 25. 1866
My dear Sir
Your letter found me yesterday at the further extremity of Somersetshire where I was wandering about the woody and heathy hills, to the great benefit of my health, and had arranged to continue doing so the whole week; not without having ascertained from Mr Brand that in his opinion a vote more or less would be of no consequence on Thursday or Friday.
I go entirely along with nearly the whole of your paper: on a point or two I need some further explanation which you could probably give in five minutes conversation at any convenient opportunity. It is quite clear that the objection made to the plan has no application, so long as we do not require to borrow a sum greater than the whole surplus on our Banking Account: since the extra million of charge occasioned by the plan, will not absorb any part of our surplus either on the Exchequer or on the Banking account, but will be provided for like the other expenses of the year, by the ways and means voted by Parliament.
On the other hand, if we at any time require to borrow a larger amount than our banking surplus, or in other words, than we can borrow from ourselves, it does seem to me, as at present informed, that the plan is pro tanto liable to the same objection as the old Sinking Fund. But this contingency, if we keep out of wars (or even if we have wars, but only short ones, at considerable intervals) will be altogether exceptional, and will, I think, be greatly outweighed by the advantage of tying down the nation to keeping up an extra revenue of a million for the express purpose of paying off debt.
In time of war, Operation B might, and probably ought to be suspended.
I am My dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Rt Hon. W. E. Gladstone &c &c
952.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT
May 29 [1866]
Dear Sir
If you are not engaged on Wednesday, June 6th, will you dine with us on that day at 7? If you will meet me at the House of Commons at ¼ before 6, we can go down to Blackheath together.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
953.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
May 31. 1866
Dear Chadwick
I have received the invitation I expected from Lord Taunton’s Commission —and shall be much obliged by any references you can give me to sources of information, or by any intimation of views of your own. When your proposal came about visiting the Limehouse schools, we were in Somersetshire; and at present it is extremely difficult for either of us to find time for it. I think I should learn more about the schools from any good account of them (if there be one) which you could refer me to, than I should pick up from a flying visit.
I read both the articles you sent with great interest, especially the conclusive and highly effective one from the Examiner.
I should be very glad of a walk and talk with you as you propose, but it is difficult to fix a time for it just now.
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
954.
TO CHARLES ROSS
- [Embossed] House of Commons
[June, 1866]
Dear Sir
I thank you very much for your note. The report of my speech in the Times, so far as I have been able to examine it, was so good, that I have lost nothing by not being able to substitute my own report for it. If I understand your note correctly it would not be open to you, if you took a speech from myself, to give slips to the other papers. I am afraid, if this is so, that it will generally prevent me from availing myself of your obliging offer to receive such communications from me. It is of much more importance to be well reported in the Times than anywhere else, but one is so much more certain of being so, that if one has to choose between sending one’s notes to the Times or to the other papers one would rather do it to the others. I am
yours faithfully
J. S. Mill
955.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
June 1. [1866]
Dear Sir
Be sure that I shall persist in opposing the Gas Bill, whatever the Committee may report —and I hope the Government will do so too, as one of them (I believe, Mr. Cowper), on the former discussion, expressed the opinion that Gas works ought to be kept out of towns and their immediate vicinity altogether.
I expect to be at the House every day next week and if you like to come at any time when the House is sitting and send in your name to me, I shall be happy to come to you.
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
956.
TO WILLIAM FRASER RAE
June 2. 1866
Dear Sir
I shall be happy to propose you as a member of the Political Economy Club. You may however have to wait some time before being elected, as there are several good candidates standing before you.
The reason I do not give my speeches to the Times, is that the Times would keep them to itself, while the other papers give slips to one another. It would be a great piece of servility to give anything that depends on me to the Times alone; denying it to the papers with whose politics I agree, and which have acted in the most friendly manner to me throughout.
Will you do us the pleasure of dining with us on Wednesday next (June 6) at half past seven? I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
957.
TO LADY AMBERLEY
June 3. [1866]
Dear Lady Amberley
I should much like to accept your kind proposal, if it were not that I have given a general invitation to two persons to dine with me at the House any day this week, and one or both of them may possibly choose Monday, the more so as they may be there on Monday to hear the debate. I therefore feel tied up until my engagement with them is fulfilled, or till the end of this week.
I am
Dear Lady Amberley
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
958.
TO CHRISTOPHER DARBY GRIFFITH
Blackheath Park, 9th June 1866
Dear Sir,—
I am happy that, as I infer from your note of yesterday’s date, you are not indisposed towards the extension of the electoral franchise to women within the limits expressed in the petition.
The notice which I gave in the House yesterday goes as far as I think it prudent to go, on this subject, in the present session. As there is no chance that we can succeed in getting a clause for admitting women to the suffrage introduced with the present Reform Bill, it seems to me and to other friends of such a proposal desirable merely to open the subject this year, without taking up the time of the House and increasing the accusation of obstructiveness by forcing on a discussion which cannot lead to a practical result. What we are now doing will lay the foundation of a further movement when advisable, and will prepare for that movement a much greater amount of support in the country than we should have if we attempted it at present.
959.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
June 13 [1866]
Dear Sir
If you are disengaged on Wednesday the 20th, will you dine with us at half past seven to meet some Americans, whom I think you will like to know if you do not already know them. Miss Hamilton, a granddaughter of the famous Hamilton—her two nieces, and Mr Schuyler, who is married to one of them—I am
Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
960.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Wednesday
[June 13, 1866]
Dear Mr Plummer
It is most mortifying that we were beaten last night on the Gas Bill. I thought when the Government took our side we should be successful, but the influence of the Gas Companies, and the unwillingness of many members to set aside the decision of the Select Committee, were too much for us.
I found your letter at the House, but not your own petition, and I could learn nothing about it. But it would have made no difference.
I obtained several votes for the right side. But some who would otherwise have voted with us [said?] that the manufacturers are a still worse nuisance, and that the ground now given to the Gas Company would have been sure to be occupied by manufacturers.
I am Dear Mr Plummer
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
The papers are all wrong about my motion last night. I did not bring it in, but postponed it to Tuesday [next?]
J.S.M.
961.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Thursday night
[June 14, 1866]
Dear Mr Plummer
The House will be very impatient of an attempt to renew the contest on a subject of this sort after a decision, and will probably defeat us, in consequence, by a greatly increased majority. Nevertheless, if Mr Tite and the others who led the opposition to the Bill the other night are willing to oppose it again, I will join with them. Without their concurrence it would be a mere waste of time attempting it. I think our best hope now is the House of Lords, where the private pecuniary interests are not so powerful. In that House the demonstration you intend to make may have a considerable effect. I recommend a direct application to Lord Derby for his support.
I am very sorry that I shall not be able to see you next Sunday, as I am engaged through the whole day and evening, but if you can come to the House pretty early tomorrow (Friday) evening I will see you.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
962.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 3. 1866
Dear Sir
Immediately on receiving your letter I wrote to Mr Gladstone, and I inclose his answer, which I have only this morning received. I wrote also to Mr Fortescue giving him notice that I should ask him a question publicly in the House yesterday; but did not do so, since the private explanation which he gave me in the House shewed me, as his memorandum sent by Gladstone will shew to you, that all the mischief which could be done by the Government without passing a Bill through Parliament has been consummated. The supplemental charter received the Queen’s signature weeks ago. It empowers the Senate to give degrees to all comers. In order to enable these graduates to have any voice in the Government of the University, and to enable the Govt to enlarge the Senate, a Bill is required which Fortescue was on the point of introducing when the resignation took place.
You are better able than I am to judge whether any breach of faith has been committed. Fortescue maintains that the expression of intention given in their speeches was the notice promised, and a sufficient warning. We, who were holding back on account of the Reform Bill, certainly were led to expect a further notice: otherwise we should have brought the matter before the House at once, which would have been very disagreeable to the Govt. Whether treachery or misunderstanding, the fact is most unfortunate both in its direct and its indirect consequences. When you have made up your mind what is the best thing that can now be done, please let me know. I suppose the next step will be to put a question to the incoming Ministry.
The conclusion of your pamphlet which you sent to me in proof, is excellent. It adds new and good arguments to the old ones. But I suppose you will have to add a supplement to it now. In haste
yours ever
J. S. Mill
963.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
July 3 [1866]
Dear Chadwick
I only received your note yesterday (Monday) on returning from the country. The Evidence is with Hickson, who wanted it for the same reason as yourself. I have written to him to send it to you as soon as he can spare it.
I am quite unable to propose any time for a talk on the subject unless you are able to come here early on Wednesday forenoon (for I expect a visitor later) or unless you can come to the House on Thursday before the hour of the Committee (twelve) or after the rising of the House—which will probably be between four and five. In haste
yrs ever
J. S. Mill
964.
TO LADY AMBERLEY
July 4. [1866]
Dear Lady Amberley
Thursday will not be convenient, and perhaps you will kindly allow me to leave Tuesday week dependent on what is doing in the House that evening—especially as it is the day on which I hope to bring in the motion I have given notice of. I am
Dear Lady Amberley
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
965.
TO WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
July 4. 1866
My dear Sir
Many thanks for your note and its inclosure. I saw Mr Fortescue in the House on Monday, and he gave me substantially the same explanations, differing however in one point from what seems to be your impression, for according to his statement the authority to the University to grant degrees to all comers is a completed fact. The admission of the new class of graduates to Convocation, and the increase of the numbers of the Senate, require the previous authority of Parliament; but these are, in the eyes of opponents, only secondary points, since the Government for the time being can, though more gradually, infuse any element into the Senate by the process of filling up vacancies. There has been an unfortunate misunderstanding in this matter, on one or on both sides. Whose fault it was I am unable to say; very probably ours. But the fact is that many Liberals who were opposed to the changes fully believed that the speeches to which Mr Fortescue refers were not the promised notice, and that in some shape (such as a notice of the introduction of the intended Bill) they should be otherwise warned before the last moment arrived; being anxious not to stir until the last moment, on account of the Reform Bill. I am afraid that the consciousness of having, or being thought to have, partly themselves to blame, will not tend to soften their feelings, or disincline them to blame others. I am
My dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
The Right Hon.
W. E. Gladstone M.P.
966.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Friday [6? July, 1866]
Dear Chadwick
I send you by this post some of the most important parts of the Evidence, of which I have been able to obtain duplicate copies. Hickson will send the rest when he can spare it.
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
967.
TO JAMES MARTINEAU
July 6. 1866
Dear Sir—
It would be very discreditable to any Englishman who watches the progress of opinion, & is capable of understanding the vast importance of speculative philosophy, to have remained ignorant of your contributions to it or of the influence you have exercised over the mode of thought of a considerable proportion of the few & scattered metaphysical students in this country. It would always give me much pleasure to bear testimony to your knowledge both special & general, your abilities, & your candid appreciation of opponents, of which I have had a striking instance in my own case. Unfortunately, however, if I were to volunteer that testimony on the occasion of the vacancy in University College, & if when given it were of any value to you, it could only be so by being prejudicial to another candidate who, though I have no reason to think his claims superior to yours in any other respect, would certainly teach doctrines much nearer than yours to those which I myself hold on the great philosophical questions. Now though this in itself is far from being a paramount consideration with me, the opportunities are so few & unfrequent of obtaining for opinions similar to my own their fair share of influence in the public teaching of this country that if I myself had a vote in the disposal of the professorship, I shd think myself bound, in the general interest of philosophical thought no less than of my own form of it, to give the preference to a candidate (otherwise sufficiently qualified) who would teach my own opinions, in one of the very few chairs from which those opinions would not be a peremptory exclusion. You are perfectly capable of entering into this feeling even if you do not approve of it, & I can only add that I do not think I have ever in any instance regretted so much my inability to support a similar candidature.
968.
TO J. GEORGE MAWBY
Blackheath Park, July 6, 1866
Dear Sir—
I have read attentively your letter, and the printed correspondence which you sent, and which contains many things having an important bearing on the question to which it relates; but it seems to me to avoid a point which cannot be excluded from consideration, viz., how far a nation is bound by the unauthorized act of its representative when it has not disavowed that act at the proper time. You say, “the way to recal the undue words of a plenipotentiary would be to punish him for exceeding his powers.” But whether we ought or ought not to have done this, we did not do it; on the contrary, the few words of modified disapprobation which were uttered by a few public men, only brought into stronger relief the general assent, or at least acquiescence, which the Declaration of Paris received from our all constituted authorities. Surely if there ever was such a thing as a tacit recognition and confirmation of the act of an ambassador, we have it in this case. I am far from giving this consideration as conclusive; for, indeed, I hold the right of a nation to bind itself and its posterity permanently, even by an express treaty, to be much more limited than I believe it is generally deemed to be by those who share your opinions. But there is surely a difficulty here which I do not perceive that you have in any degree taken into account.
I am, dear Sir, yours very sincerely,
J. S. Mill
Mr. J. G. Mawby
969.
TO FRANCIS BOWEN
July 10, 1866
Dear Sir
Your visit to London has occurred at a time at which I am unluckily unable to profit by it as much as I might have hoped to do, my time being almost entirely preoccupied for every day this week. But if it is not inconvenient to you, I could arrange to call on you at your Hotel some time on Saturday afternoon, say two o’clock. Should this not suit you, the only other thing I can at present propose is that we should meet on Monday evening at the House of Commons. I am
Dear Sir
yours very sincerely
J. S. Mill
970.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 10. 1866
Dear Sir
I perceive that Sir R. Peel has given a notice, virtually for Monday next, about the proceedings on the subject of the Queen’s University, expressly including the hurried convocation of the Senate. This is probably done in concert with Mr Lowe and I think the subject is best in their hands. I do not think there would be the smallest use in my speaking or writing further to Mr Gladstone. The letter I wrote to him in answer to the one you saw, would make him fully aware of the damage which I consider to be done to the reputation of his Government by the disregard of what was, at least, supposed by the persons most concerned to be a pledge.
The subject is altogether a most unhappy one, and, in any event, full of mischief to the liberal cause. I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
971.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 15. 1866
Dear Sir
The success of the motion in the Senate for postponement is very important. Is the postponement to a given day, or, as I find stated in a newspaper sine die? It is also important that it was moved by Sir R. Peel, as it shews him to be in earnest: and he has been backed by an article in the Times, no doubt written or prompted by Lowe.
As they seem determined to go on with the subject, I think it is best in their hands. I will certainly support them in what I think a good cause, but I would rather not be the prominent person in a move which is very likely to break up the alliance between the Irish Catholics and the English Liberals, and perhaps keep the Tories in office for years. I am
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
972.
TO THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
July 16 [1866?]
Dear Sir
Monsieur Barrère, the bearer of this note, and a highly esteemed and valued friend of mine, is a candidate for headship of the new International School to be established in France by your Association. I should think M. Barrère eminently qualified for such a post, both by his acquirements, his general character and disposition, and his great experience as a teacher both in England and in France. But he will himself more fully explain his qualifications. He is, I understand, very well known to Dr Leonard Schmitz.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Professor Huxley.
973.
TO JOHN ELLIOT CAIRNES
July 19 [1866]
Dear Sir
I shall be at the Cobden Club dinner, but it will hardly be possible for us to talk of such matters there. I shall be at the House on Friday, and able to see you either while the House is sitting, or, if it suits you better, in the Library at any time between three and four.
ever yrs truly
J. S. Mill
974.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Saturday [July 21, 1866]
Dear Chadwick
This is to remind you that I hope to see you at the Committee on Monday, and to say that the Committee has appointed to meet at one instead of twelve.
yours ever truly
J. S. Mill
975.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
July 22 [1866]
Dear Mr Plummer
Could you and Mrs Plummer do us the pleasure of dining with us next Sunday at five? We should like to see you again before we leave England. I am
Dear Mr Plummer
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
976.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
July 25 [1866]
Dear Mr Plummer
I wrote to you on Sunday to ask if you and Mrs Plummer can give us the pleasure of dining with us on Sunday next at five, but as I directed the note to Belle Sauvage Yard and have not heard from you in answer, I am afraid it did not reach you. Will you kindly give me a line to say if you can come?
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
977.
TO EDMOND BEALES
July 26, 1866.
Dear Sir,
I congratulate you and all our friends on the yielding of the government. They deserve credit, especially Mr. Walpole, for having given way before it was too late.
I enclose £5 for the Defence Fund.
I am,
Dear Sir,
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
Edmond Beales Esq.
978.
TO EDMOND BEALES
July 28. 1866
Dear Sir
Some American friends of mine, chiefly ladies, are very desirous of being present at the meeting on Monday. Would you kindly interest yourself in getting them places on the platform? The party consists of Miss Hamilton, grandaughter of the celebrated statesman, her two nieces, and her brother in law, Mr Schuyler. An admission directed to G. S. [sic] Schuyler Esq., United Hotel, Charles Street, Haymarket, would find them. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Edmond Beales Esq.
979.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Aug. 1. [1866]
Dear Chadwick
I found your Clause on returning late at night from the House on the day on which the Public Health Bill completed its passage through Committee. It was thus too late to do anything.
I will take care that your Evidence is sent to you for revisal.
yrs ever truly
J. S. Mill
980.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Aug. 5. 1866.
Dear Chadwick
I should be obliged if you could soon return my paper on Schools with any remarks and suggestions, as I wish to send it in before I leave England, which will be as speedily as possible after the prorogation.
I regretted, the other day, not having kept a copy of your Clause, as there was an unforeseen opportunity of rediscussing the subject on the bringing up of the Report. You will however, in all probability, do better with it than I could on that occasion have done.
yrs very truly
J. S. Mill
981.
TO H. CHOLMONDELEY PENNELL
Aug. 5. 1866
Mr Mill presents his compliments to Mr Cholmondeley Pennell, and approves the principle of uniting the greatest possible number of capable writers in the same publication, each under his individual responsibility: but Mr Mill’s engagements, both public and private, are so numerous and pressing, that he is unable to hold out any prospect of its being in his power to contribute to the intended publication.
982.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Aug. 5. 1866
Dear Mr Plummer
I have read the essays which you sent, and I am glad that I was able (though not without some inconvenience) to find time for doing so, as they were very interesting and encouraging reading. All the seven essays deserve honourable mention, and if they were printed together in a volume, it would be a really valuable one, both for sound views and for arguments well worth considering in support of what I think unsound ones. But the only one to which, if I were the judge, I could conscientiously award a prize would be the one numbered 160, with the motto, “Knowledge is Power.” This, I think, is very decidedly the best, both in matter and style.
The one numbered 137, with the motto “Free Competition,” though by no means equal to 160, shews a remarkable degree of mastery over some not very obvious principles of political economy proving that the Sheffield artisan by whom it professes to be written, has studied that subject diligently and intelligently. If the writers were pupils in a school or students in an University, this one would perhaps deserve the second prize for his personal merits: but as an essay on the subject, and as a composition generally, I do not think it [superior?] if even equal, to several of the others. If the second prize is divisible, I should suggest divid[ing] it among the six: if not, I cannot venture to recommend any one of them as preferable to the rest. But if it is necessary to select one, you can hardly go far wrong.
I am Dear Mr Plummer
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
983.
TO J. ARTHUR PARTRIDGE
Aug. 8. 1866
Dear Sir—
I am sincerely obliged to you for sending me your book on Democracy which I will read as soon as I can find time for any reading not required by an immediate exigency.
The other subject of your letter, the possibility of an organization of the middle class reformers, is very important but I am afraid very difficult, as it is hardly possible for the advanced reformers to agree on a common creed & it would not be desirable that each shd put in abeyance the special points of his own. This observation applies to myself even more than to most reformers since my particular scheme has probably very few adherents as a whole, though almost every separate point of it has many. I can only say for myself that I shd always be eager to cooperate with all other reformers when I agree with them, & to go forward if necessary alone on those convictions of my own with which others may not agree, or to which they may not attach so much practical importance as I do.
984.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Aug. 9. 1866.
Dear Chadwick
I am greatly obliged to you for your notes. I have made use of them in improving my answers by various alterations and insertions. The main substance of the answers I am very glad to find that you approve.
I have sent in your name as a candidate for the Cobden Club. The Committee will meet in February for the purpose of filling up the list of members.
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
985.
TO AN UNIDENTIFIED CORRESPONDENT
Aug. 10. 1866
Dear Sir
I am very deeply impressed with the absolute necessity of maintaining intact the convertibility of all bank notes; but whether payment in gold at ten days sight might not be a sufficient protection against the evils involved in inconvertibility, is a question fairly open to discussion, and on which I do not profess to have finally made up my mind. I am not, however, inclined to rate highly the positive advantages of such a relaxation of the existing law. But I shall be glad to read what may be said in its favour, either by the Chamber of Commerce of Birmingham or by any other mercantile authority. I am
Dear Sir
very faithfully yours
J. S. Mill
986.
TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY
Aug 11. 1866
Dear Sir
I had been hoping for some further communication from you, and now it has unluckily come on the very day on which I am leaving England for the Continent. I very much regret that circumstances have prevented us from meeting more frequently during your stay in this country; but, so far as regards Australian politics, I regret it chiefly on my own account, for on that subject I should have been almost solely a learner from you. If you have time to write to me at my address in France, Saint Véran, près Avignon, it would give me great pleasure to correspond with you.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
987.
TO HERBERT SPENCER
Aug. 15. 1866
Dear Sir
The Jamaica Committee have decided that a short letter asking the public for subscriptions to form a Guarantee Fund of £10,000 shall be published with the signatures of some of those members of the Committee whose names would have a favourable influence on any part of the public. You are, in virtue of your subscriptions, a member of the General Committee, and your name, as one of those appended to the letter, would be of very great value, as it would add, to a great intellectual and moral weight, that of a position aloof from all the personal part of politics, and a character which no one would think of calling intemperate or fanatical. Merely in the list of subscribers your name is of great value, but if you would not object to allowing the use of it for the other purpose, please communicate with Mr. Chesson, the Secretary, 65 Fleet Street. He will send you the letter and the list of those who have given, or hereafter give, their names: the officers of the Committee of course, together with Bright, Goldwin Smith, Samuel Morley (probably) and several other members of parliament and liberal notabilities in the North of England.
I am Dear Sir
Yours very truly
J. S. Mill
988.
TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL
le 20 août 1866
Mon cher d’Eichthal
Votre lettre n’est parvenue à Londres qu’après mon départ. Depuis bientôt huit jours, je suis ici, et bien content, je vous jure, de pouvoir revenir à des occupations tranquilles. La vie parlementaire fatigue et dissipe l’esprit toujours pour l’exercer quelquefois.
C’eût été un vrai plaisir pour moi que de causer avec vous et de comparer nos impressions.
Je suis très indifférent aux pensées de ceux pour qui les événements du moment ne sont que des événements d’un moment; quand même ce moment s’appellerait un siècle. Mais ceux chez qui tout ce qui arrive se lie à une conception générale du développement humain—et c’est notre cas à tous deux—ceux-là ont toujours quelque chose à dire l’un à l’autre. Espérons que l’occasion nous en viendra.—Bien des amitiés à votre frère, et à Duveyrier, dont la santé altérée me fait de la peine.
Votre bien dévoué
J. S. Mill
989.
TO WILLIAM SCHOLEFIELD
Aug. 20. 1866
Dear Sir
The Reform Meeting to which the Committee and yourself have done me the honour to invite me, seems likely to be a very important demonstration, but it is out of my power to take part in it in any other way than by the expression of my best wishes. Begging the favour of your communicating this reply to the Committee I am
Dear Sir
yours very faithfully
J. S. Mill
William Scholefield Esq. M. P.
990.
TO THOMAS DAVIDSON
Aug. 21, 1866
Sir
You have probably thought me unfeeling, since your letter of July 17th seemed to me to deserve an answer, in having so long delayed it. The delay was not solely owing to the manner in which all my time was engrossed during the latter part of the session, for if I could have seen my way to any mode of helping your struggles, though only by advice, I would not have omitted to do so. But I felt as if any time would be soon enough to say no, while by waiting there might always be a faint chance of being able to say something better. There is but little, however, that I can say, and hardly anything that I can do. I have no power of obtaining government appointments, and little or no influence with those who can give literary employment. I am afraid, in the circumstances of the case, your chance of obtaining employment as a teacher is small. Translating is one of the most wretchedly paid of all kinds of literary work, and the market is so overstocked with translators (very bad ones, but few publishers know the difference) that it is almost impossible to get employment even at that wretched pay. I see only two things of much promise, in a literary capacity, open to those who are situated as you are, and in neither of these would your opinions be much of an obstacle. You might be able to form a connexion with some newspaper as subeditor, correspondent, or writer, ultimately perhaps leading to editorship; or you might be able to earn a subsistence by writing in periodicals. In the former I have no power of helping you, unless you had already done something which could be adduced as proof of your capabilities. In the second it is barely possible that I might be of use to you; that is, if you write an article and send it to me, then may be some review or magazine which if I think well of it, would take it on my recommendation, whereby the foundation might be laid for your becoming a habitual contributor. After a good deal of thinking, I can find nothing else to propose to you. Manuscripts can be sent here (Avignon, Vaucluse, France) by book post, or if sent to my house (Blackheath Park, Kent) they are sure to be forwarded, but possibly not in less than three or four weeks.
You mention having been favourably recommended to Professor Key. From a former slight acquaintance with him, I should not think him likely to be prejudiced against you on account of your opinions; though what his power of being of use to you might be, I do not know. I am
Yours very sincerely
J. S. Mill
Thomas Davidson Esq.
991.
TO ROBERT PHARAZYN
Aug. 21. 1866
Sir—
The great occupation of my time in the latter part of the session has prevented me from more promptly acknowledging your letter of April 14. I am glad to find that a student & thinker, such as you evidently are, finds so much in common between me & himself. The author of the article in the W. R. from which you quote (who is not, as you suppose, Mr Lewes ) is quite right in saying that I have thrown no light on the difficulty of reconciling the belief in a perfectly good God with the actual constitution of Nature. It was not my business to do so, but if I had given any opinion on the point it would have been that there is no mode of reconciling them except the hypothesis that the Creator is a Being of limited power. Either he is not all powerful or he is not good, & what I said was, that unless he is good I will not call him so nor worship him. The appearances however of contrivance in the universe, whatever amount of weight we attach to them, seem to point rather to a benevolent design limited by obstacles than to a malevolent or tyrannical character in the designer & I therefore think that the mind which cherishes devotion to a Principle of Good in the universe, leans in the direction in which the evidence, though I cannot think it conclusive, nevertheless points. I therefore do not discourage this leaning, though I think it important that people shd know that the foundation it rests on is an hypothesis, not an ascertained fact. This is the principal limitation which I would apply to your position, that we shd encourage ourselves to believe as to the unknowable what it is best for mankind that we shd believe. I do not think it can ever be best for mankind to believe what there is not evidence of, but I think that, as mankind improve they will much more recognise two independent mental provinces, the province of belief & the province of imaginative conjecture, that they will become capable of keeping them distinct, & while they limit their belief to the evidence, will think it allowable to let their imaginative anticipations go forth, not carrying belief in their train, in the direction which experience & the study of human nature shews to be the most improving to the character & most exalting or consoling to the individual feelings.
I do not know enough of N. Zealand politics to enter on that subject with you. I think most people in England are now of opinion that the colony shd have perfect freedom to manage its own affairs, paying the expenses of its own wars. There is some fear that you will not be just to the aborigines, but a still stronger belief that if you are not we cannot effectually protect them. I hope you are not wrong in saying that there is no disposition to be unjust to them. But if so the New Zealand colonists are I believe the only “Englishmen under new conditions” who do not think any injustice or tyranny whatever, legitimate against what they call inferior races, at least if those races do not implicitly submit to their will. I will hope better things for New Zealand, but in this as in the other & greater matter my belief will depend on the evidence.
P.S. I have not forgotten Mr. Revans, to whom pray make my remembrances.
992.
TO THEODOR GOMPERZ
August 22, 1866
Dear Sir—
Ever since the functions of a member of parliament have been added I may say almost in spite of myself, to my other avocations, my time has been so completely engrossed that I was obliged to postpone even the duty & pleasure of thanking you for the second volume of your most interesting & valuable Herculanean series. You will not be surprised that I have not yet been able to give to the new volume more than a cursory inspection. I am indeed reduced to wondering whether I shall ever be able to resume those quiet studies which are so prodigiously better for the mind itself than the tiresome labour of chipping off little bits of one’s thoughts, of a size to be swallowed by a set of diminutive practical politicians incapable of digesting them. One ought to be very sure of being able to do something in politics that cannot be as well done by others, to justify one for the sacrifice of time and energies that might be employed on higher work. Time will show whether it was worth while to make this sacrifice for the sake of anything I am capable of doing towards forming a really advanced liberal party which, I have long been convinced, cannot be done except in the House of Commons.
Meanwhile what a change in Germany! &, it may be said, in Europe: a change of which it is hardly possible for any foreigner or perhaps for any German, to divine the consequences. I am amazed at the confident omniscience of English journalists, periodical writers, & members of parliament, every one of whom thinks he perfectly sees all the consequences that are to issue from what has happened, forgetful that they themselves were mostly, when the war began, indignant denouncers of Prussia & sympathizers with Austria while they have now quite passed over to the other side. Rien ne réussit comme le succès. All the faults of Austria are now seen & people have ceased to care for the flagrant immorality of the contest on the Prussian side. They do not see, or they do not care, that the struggle was between an expiring feudality & a powerful Caesarism & that to wish success to the last even against the first is to cast out devils by Beelzebub the prince of the devils.
I am very anxious to know what you think of all this. Few Germans are so impartial both by position & by character as you are. What is now likely to become of your country? It might be a greater country yet than it ever has been, but there seems to me a want of practical good sense, & comprehension of the situation in the counsels of the Court of Vienna which give little ground of hope. Are the Hapsburgs capable of learning from experience or of really fitting themselves into the circumstances of a new age? The abolition of the Reichsrath which many European liberals foolishly praised because it seemed a concession to Hungary, has proved to be the most fatal step that could have been taken, because, as might have been foreseen, it destroyed all faith in the durability of a concession once made. It shewed that the Imperial family did not deem itself bound by a Constitution once granted. The hopes I had begun to form for Austria sunk to a very low ebb from that day.
I expect to be at Avignon till the end of this year & shall be very happy if you have time & inclination to write to me.
993.
TO JOHN BAXTER LANGLEY
Avignon, Sept. 10th, 1866
Dear Sir,—
Your letter of Aug. 30th, did not reach me until too late to send a letter which could be read at the meeting in favour of a Testimonial to Mr. Beales. I think it quite right that reformers should make compensation to Mr. Beales for the pecuniary loss to which he has been subjected in consequence of the prominent part he has taken in urging the claims of the working classes to representation in Parliament. I see no force in the reasons assigned as a justification of this treatment of Mr. Beales. Strong political convictions are not considered a disqualification in much higher judicial offices than that of Revising Barrister, nor are ever likely to be so considered except when the opinions are on the side opposed to the ruling powers. To exclude from the seat of justice all who are decided politicians would be to keep out all the fittest men, for who in the present state of the world is without strong political opinions of some sort, except because he is wanting either in the mental cultivation or in the public spirit requisite for taking due interest in the subject. And to say that the opinions shall be an exclusion because they are known and avowed would be still more absurd, since it is precisely when they are known to the world that there is least danger of their exercising an improper bias on the judgment. Besides, even if the reason were good against appointing an active politician for the first time, it cannot hold against retaining him who having been appointed has, by the acknowledgement of even adversaries, proved his impartiality by his conduct.—I am, dear sir,
Yours very faithfully,
J. S. Mill
994.
TO J. GEORGE MAWBY
Avignon, Sept. 10, 1866
Dear Sir,—
I thank you for your interesting and valuable letter of the 23rd ult. The considerations brought forward in the latter part of it are much to the purpose, and will materially assist me in making up my mind on the question to which you justly attach such high importance.
If, as you seem to have shown, Russia has, in the matter of Circassia, violated the provisions of the Declaration of Paris, it remains to be seen whether France, the only other great naval Power which was a party with us to the Declaration, is willing to join with us in getting rid of it. You and your friends seem to anticipate no difficulty on this point; and I certainly think that the Right of Search may, under many circumstances, be valuable to France as well as to England. But I cannot share your confidence in this matter, remembering how French Governments, and especially the first Napoleon, have inveighed against England for exercising this right, and have prided themselves on vindicating against us what they called the liberty of the seas.
Mr. Disraeli’s statement, referred to in your postscript, seems to me, as it does to you, to give ground for hope that this great question is not closed.
I am, dear Sir, yours very truly,
J. S. Mill
J. G. Mawby, Esq.
995.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Sept. 10. 1866.
Dear Mr Plummer
Many thanks for your note of Aug. 14 and the article from the Working Man inclosed in it. The writing is that of one whose praise is worth having, but he rather overstates the share I had in getting the Industrial Societies Act passed. Mr Hughes, in his generosity, had already given me too much of the credit which justly belonged to himself and his friends. My evidence certainly helped them, but I was not examined for “a whole week”: my examination only lasted a day, and the transaction is altogether too highly coloured.
If you thought the parliamentary papers so bulky, what would you have said if you had had the whole? A much greater bulk than what I sent to you had unluckily been otherwise disposed of before you spoke to me on the subject. But you will probably find some of them useful.
Will you kindly send me by post the biographical notice of me which you wrote for Messrs Cassell? I have been asked by a Geneva editor for biographical particulars, and I do not know of anything so suitable for sending to him as your paper, but I have no copy of it here.
With our kind remembrances to Mrs. Plummer, I am
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
996.
TO GUSTAVE D’EICHTHAL
le 20 septembre 1866
Mon cher d’Eichthal
Je suis à Saint Véran, et je compte y rester jusqu’à la fin de l’année et au delà. Vous serez le bienvenu si vous voulez bien y venir. Il serait bon de m’avertir quelques jours d’avance, afin que je ne sois pas exposé à choisir, sans le savoir, le moment de votre arrivée pour une de ces excursions que j’ai l’habitude de faire. A l’hotel d’Europe on vous indiquera ma demeure.
Vous êtes maintenant un des plus anciens amis qui me restent. Nous avons non seulement beaucoup d’idées mais encore beaucoup de souvenirs en commun, à partir de celui de notre jeune ami Eyton Tooke, que nous perdîmes d’une manière si tragique il y a 36 ans. J’ai toujours mieux aimé les vieux amis que les nouveaux, et vous ne faites pas exception à la règle.
Votre affectionné
J. S. Mill
997.
TO JOHN PLUMMER
Sept. 20. 1866
Dear Mr Plummer
Many thanks for the copy of the biographical notice. I am very sorry to hear of the backslidings of the firm in Belle Sauvage Yard, and of the probable failure of the Working Man, which is both unfortunate in itself and a special disappointment to you. I hope that, even on the worst supposition the personal inconvenience will only be temporary, but you will feel very much the loss of a position which at one time seemed to promise so much usefulness.
I am obliged to you for sending your Ode. It was really worth writing, for there is both sense and spirit in it, and a degree of energy as well as of melody which justify writing in verse.
I am Dear Mr Plummer
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
998.
TO JOHN MORLEY
Sept. 26. 1866
Dear Sir—
I am much obliged to you for your article though I do not altogether agree with it. I presented the petition, not because I concurred in its sentiments, but because it came from people who were entitled to be heard, & on the last day of the session they could not find any other member whom they thought suitable. I approved of all Lord Dalhousie’s annexations, except that of Kerouli which never took effect, having been at once disallowed from home & indeed Lord D. himself gave it up before he knew of its having been negatived. My principle was this. Wherever there are really native states, with a nationality, & historical traditions & feelings, which is emphatically the case (for example) with the Rajpoot states, there I would on no account take advantage of any failure of heirs to put an end to them. But all the Mahomedan (Rampore excepted which descends from Fyzoola Khan the Rohilla chief) & most of the Mahratta kingdoms are not of home growth, but created by conquest not a century ago & the military chiefs & office holders who carry on the government & form the ruling class are almost as much foreigners to the mass of the people as we ourselves are. The Scindia & Holkar families in Central India are foreign dynasties, & of low caste too, Mahrattas who have usurped provinces from their native dynasties of Jats, Goojars, Boondelas &c. The home of the Mahrattas is in the South, & there is no really native Mahratta kingdom now standing except Kolapore. In these modern states created by conquest I would make the continuance of the dynasty by adoption not a right nor a general rule, but a reward to be earned by good government & as such I would grant it freely.
All this however was changed by Lord Canning’s promise, which I thought at the time, & still think most ill advised. And even if right otherwise I think it ought to have excepted states actually created by our gift, as Mysore was. In such cases we are by right the sole interpreters of our own deed of gift. All arguments grounded on vague phrases of that most plausible and successful of political humbugs Lord Wellesley, count with me for nothing. He would have taken the whole country outright had he dared, but Parlt had then very recently made a solemn declaration against territorial acquisitions in India & his object was to throw dust in the eyes of Parlt & take the country as far as it could be done while pretending not to do it. The only practical question with me is, does Lord Canning’s promise to the native princes which waived our right of escheat, fairly & reasonably include this particular case? Opinions among experienced Indians are divided on this point & I have not yet thoroughly examined the documents. I therefore have not made up my mind though I much fear our faith is committed beyond recal[l].
In one thing I fully agree with you: that whenever we sanction an adoption we ought to undertake the education of the young successor & train him to public business under a judicious and experienced Resident. This has been done in a good many instances & often with very considerable success. Travancore which you mention is only one of a number of cases in point (if we did educate the chief himself, which I forget) & though the princes so trained usually degenerate more or less in the lapse of years, they almost always remain much better than the miserable creatures brought up in the zenana. One native chief within a recent period before succeeding to his inheritance filled responsible offices in our territories & he immediately commenced introducing the best parts of our system into his own.
999.
TO CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY
Oct. 2. 1866
Dear Sir
I feel it a very high compliment that you should wish to know my opinion on a point of conscience, and still more so that you should think that opinion likely to be of any assistance to you in the guidance of your own political conduct.
The point mentioned in your letter is one which I have often and carefully considered, for though my own course in public matters has been one which did not often call on me to cooperate with anybody, I have reflected much on the conditions of cooperation, among the other requisites of practical public life. The conclusion which I have long come to is one which seems rather obvious when one has got at it, but it is so seldom acted on, that apparently most people find it difficult to practise. It seems to me, in the first place, that a conscientious person whose turn of mind and outward circumstances combine to make practical political life his line of greatest usefulness, may, and often ought to, be willing to put his opinion in abeyance on a political question which he deems to be, in the circumstances of the time and place, of secondary importance: which may be the case with any question that does not, in one’s own judgment, involve any fundamental principle of morality. But, in consenting to waive one’s opinion, it seems to me an indispensable condition that he should not disguise it. He should say to his constituents and to the world exactly what he really thinks about the matter. Insincere professions are the one cardinal sin in a representative government. If an Australian politician wishes to be in the Assembly for the sake of questions which he thinks much more important, for the time being, than that of protection, I should hold him justified in saying to a constituency “I think protection altogether a mistake, but since it is a sine qua non with you, and the opposite is not a sine qua non with me, if you elect me I will not oppose it”. If he conscientiously thought that the strong feeling of the public in its favour gave them a right, or made it expedient, to have its practice tried, I should not think him wrong in promising to support it; though it is not a thing I should lightly, or willingly, do. He might even, for adequate public reasons, consent to join a Protectionist ministry, but only on condition that protection should be an open question—that he should be at liberty to speak his mind publicly on the subject.—The question of expediency in these matters, each must decide for himself. The expediencies vary with all sorts of personal considerations. For instance, if he has considerable popular influence, and is, in all other respects than this, the favourite candidate, it will often be his most virtuous course to insist on entire freedom of action, and make the electors feel that they cannot have a representative of his quality without acquiescing in his voting against some of their opinions. The only absolute rule I would lay down, is not to consent to the smallest hypocrisy. The rest is matter of practical judgment, on which all that can be said is, Weigh all the considerations and act for the best.
I am Dear Sir
very sincerely and respectfully yours
J. S. Mill
Hon. C. Gavan Duffy.
1000.
TO DAVID URQUHART
Oct. 4. 1866
My dear Urquhart—
I am really obliged to you for the sight of Mrs Urquhart’s letter. I wish it were read by every person in the British Isles. Let me also beg you to thank your two friends if they are still with you, both for their subscriptions & for their letters. I feel a real respect for men who not only have a conscience, but whose conscience makes them feel that they are personally responsible for their actions & cannot shift off that responsibility upon the shoulders of superiors.
It is a real pleasure to me to find you & myself in thorough & hearty cooperation, even were it only on one subject. But the principle which actuates both of us on that subject is progressively important, & extends far beyond the particular case. You approve of my speech because you see that I am not on this occasion standing up for the negroes, or for liberty, deeply as both are interested in the subject—but for the first necessity of human society, law. One would have thought that when this was the matter in question, all political parties might be expected to be unanimous. But my eyes were first opened to the moral condition of the English nation (I except in these matters the working classes) by the atrocities perpetrated in the Indian Mutiny & the feelings which supported them at home. Then came the sympathy with the lawless rebellion of the Southern Americans in defence of an institution which is the sum of all lawlessness, as Wesley said it was of all villainy —& finally came this Jamaica business the authors of which from the first day I knew of it I determined that I would do all in my power to bring to justice if there was not another man in Parlt to stand by me. You rightly judge that there is no danger of my sacrificing such a purpose to any personal advancement. I hope I shd not be so base even if I cared for personal advancement, but as it happens, I do not.
When I last heard from the Cm they had raised £3200 though no appeal had yet been made to the general public. It must be considerably more now; & I have good hopes that we shall be near enough to getting the £10000 we ask for, to bring the Jamaica question within the reach of those of us who are most in earnest. The paper which I enclose contains only the first subscriptions. I am glad that our manifesto has raised your opinion of Goldwin Smith. I do not by any means agree in his practical conclusions as to the colonies, though many of his premises are too true. But he is a man of strong moral convictions which he is not afraid to act upon & has a decided power of leading others—provided they do not require to be conciliated first.
The Preston Cm did send me the placard which is excellent.
1001.
TO THOMAS PERRONET THOMPSON
Oct. 10. 1866
Dear Sir
I agree with you as to the importance of consulting the case of Governor Wall, and I doubt not that our law advisers have made themselves well acquainted with it. I presume, and think I remember, that it is in the State Trials. If so, that is by far the most convenient place in which to study it.
The expensiveness of the attempt to get justice done in the Jamaica matter, arises from the necessity of bringing a number of witnesses from Jamaica to London, and maintaining them there until no longer required. Our lawyers’ bills will doubtless be heavy, but will, for aught I know, not exceed as many hundreds as we are obliged to ask for thousands. We may possibly not require the whole £10000, but we thought, after consideration, that it would not be safe to ask for less.
I am Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
General Thompson
Your old constituents at Bradford are doing nobly in this matter—they surpass everybody else.
1002.
TO [DANIEL O’DONOGHUE?]
Avignon, Oct. 20 [1866]
Dear Sir—
I could hardly have received any invitation of a public kind which I should have had so much pleasure in complying with as that in your letter of the 4th instant, which has only just reached me. I feel as grateful as if I were myself an Irishman to whoever does any service to the cause of Ireland, and there is no one who has better earned the gratitude of Irishmen than Mr. Bright, were it only by his noble speech on the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill. I regard the honor which you are paying him as an important step towards establishing that sympathetic co-operation between the English and the Irish liberals, a beginning of which was happily made in the last session, and which is not only essential to the early attainment of the legislative improvements, required by both countries, but is in itself of the most auspicious promise for the permanent well-being of the whole empire. Ireland does not, however, stand in need of such a voice as mine to assist her in doing honor to her eminent friend; and I am prevented from availing myself of your invitation, not merely by distance, but by the much more serious obstacle of pressing occupations, which require the devotion of all my time up to the reassembling of Parliament.—I am very sincerely and respectfully yours,
J. S. Mill
1003.
TO DAVID URQUHART
Oct. 26. 1866
My dear Urquhart—
I thank you sincerely for your letter. The actual experience of one who has had so much of it, & of so unusual a sort, is sure to be worth having & worth meditating on.
Your letter makes me wish to give you an equally explicit statement of my own way of thinking, so far as it is different from yours. And I think I can trust myself sufficiently not to be afraid that my having done so will raise any obstacle of amour propre in my own mind to prevent me from changing any part of that way of thinking which can be shown to be wrong. I feel as strongly as you the absence of control over the executive in matters of foreign policy, & the absolute inutility & nullity, as far as that is concerned of any change of Ministers. I shd never dream of telling the working or any unrepresented classes that they have no power unless they can get the suffrage, & I do not ascribe the prodigious superiority of their moral sentiments on such matters as Eyre, the Indian Mutiny, &c. over the classes socially above them, to any intrinsic superiority of moral excellence. But I do not believe that the bad feelings, or absence of good feelings, in the others, arises from their having votes. I ascribe it to the sympathy of officials with officials & of the classes from whom officials are selected with officials of all sorts. I ascribe it also to the sympathy with authority & power, generated in our higher & upper middle classes by the feeling of being specially privileged to exercise them, & by living in a constant dread of the encroachment of the class beneath which makes it one of their strongest feelings that resistance to authority must be put down per fas et nefas. I do not believe that feelings of these kinds would exist where there was no privileged class, & where no one had more political influence of a direct kind than his mere vote gave him. There is much in American politics that is regrettable enough, but I do not observe that there is a particle of the English upper class feeling that authority (meaning the persons in authority) must be supported at all costs; & American foreign policy is all above board & in broad daylight. So, I believe would that of England be, if the working classes had votes. I am no worshipper of those classes & they know it. I have written & published harsh truths of them, which were brought up against me in meetings of the working classes during my election & I never was so much applauded by them as when I stood to what I had written & defended it. They are not yet politically corrupted by power. I doubt not that they would be corrupted like other classes by becoming the paramount power in the country, though probably in a less degree because in a multitude the general feelings of human nature are usually more powerful & class feelings proportionately less so than in a small body. But I do not want to make them predominant. I see the country under the leadership of a higher & a middle class who, by long disuse of attempting or wishing to do their duty as managers of the national affairs have become incapable of doing it, & I am hopeless of any improvement but by letting in a powerful influence from those who are the great sufferers by whatever evil is done or is left uncorrected at home & who have no personal or class interests or feelings concerned either in oppressing dependencies, or in doing or conniving at wrong to foreign countries. I could write at great length on all this, but it is not my object to defend my view of existing English politics, my object is to enable you whom I respect, to understand the source from which that view proceeds in my own mind. As for those whom I do not respect, a category which includes the great majority of public men & public writers, I should never take the trouble to give any other explanation of myself to them, than that which I hope my conduct will give.
I return, with thanks, the answer to Mrs Urquhart’s letter on Jamaica.
1004.
TO GEORGE GROTE
Nov. 12. 1866
My dear Grote
Were I to be appointed to the Council of the University of London, the chief advantage which I should anticipate would be that there would be an additional vote and voice to support you on critical occasions. That I could, in case I survived you, be to any effectual purpose your successor, is very improbable. Such an influence as yours is, can only be acquired by many years of assiduous devotion, such as you have given, to the business of the institution. Moreover, influence over such people as your colleagues in the Senate can, by any one who has no claims to it but personal ones, only be acquired by keeping constantly working at them, and wearing away by perseverance the obstacles in their minds. He must not only accustom them to look on him as a main prop, and the chief working mind of the institution but must keep himself in frequent personal communication with them, and bring social influences to bear on them. All these things would be not only in the highest degree distasteful, but practically impossible to me; and I do not see any reasonable prospect of doing as much for our objects as would make it good economy in me to give the time and trouble that would be necessary for effecting even such good as might be practicable.
The help, however, which I might give to good objects as an auxiliary to you, would be a strong inducement to me to accept your proposal; and were I not in Parliament I would do so without hesitation. As it is, however, my attending the Senate, even if limited to the two important days which you mention, would have the effect of exactly depriving me of the Easter vacation. It is hardly possible for any one who does not share my life here, to estimate the greatness of the sacrifice that being detained in England at that time would be to me, or to know in how great a degree that break in the dreary six or seven months of London, helps to keep up my health, spirits, and working power for what I have to do there. I am willing, for any object which would make it my duty, to add this sacrifice to the great one I have already made. But it is not clear to me that it is my duty to do so for the amount of good which I can see my way to effecting by means of it. As long as you are able to continue your active exertions in the Senate, there is not much danger that the ground already gained will be lost. And without you I see little prospect that any influence I could ever have would supply your place. It is, however, very desirable that there should be some one in the Senate who would give you a more effective backing than you have at present. But there are others besides me who could do this. Bain being unattainable, have you ever thought of Herbert Spencer? He is as anti-clergymanish as possible; he goes as far as the farthest of us in explaining psychological phenomena by association, and the “experience hypothesis”; he has a considerable and growing reputation, much zeal and public spirit, and is not, I should think, more suspect on the subject of religion than I am. I think he would be of great use in the Senate on the subjects on which you most need to be supported, and a very valuable acquisition otherwise. I do not know whether the duty would be agreeable to him, but from the little I know of his tastes and habits, I should expect that, rather than the contrary.
I am very glad that a majority of the Council of University College have established the principle of confining the Moral Philosophy professorship to laymen. I wish you had been able to get in Robertson, but you may still succeed in this, if the advertisements fail, as they probably will, to attract any candidate of greater prestige.
When Martineau determined to become a candidate, he wrote to me, asking for a testimonial. I wrote him a letter in reply, saying such complimentary things as I could say with truth, but declining to give him a testimonial, on the ground that I did not think it right to aid a person of his philosophical opinions in getting appointed to one of the few professorships in Europe that are open to a person of mine. Soon after, I received a letter from Hutton, saying that Martineau, having gone ahead, had charged him (Hutton) with sending in his testimonials and asking leave to send in my letter to Martineau as one of them. To which I answered that this would really be doing what I had declared myself unable conscientiously to do, and I therefore refused; to his considerable displeasure.
I hope the Aberdeen students will do themselves the honour of electing you. I am in more need of a model for my own Rectorial Discourse than capable of affording one to others, for though I have put into it a good deal that may be useful, I think it is very likely to disappoint expectation.
I am glad to see the announcement of a second edition of the Plato. I see, every now and then, traces of its influence both in English and in French writings.
With our kind regards to Mrs Grote, I am my dear Grote
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
1005.
TO ROWLAND G. HAZARD
Saint Véran, Avignon Nov. 16. 1866
Dear Sir
I am greatly obliged to you for your letter of Oct. 22, and still more so for the printed one which I subsequently received. It is a real pleasure to have you for an antagonist, for you see the true gist of a question, do not trifle on the mere surface of the subject, and your arguments are real arguments addressing themselves to the real points in dispute and not to imaginary ones. If I had more time I might perhaps go into the subject fully, and answer you at as much length as you have answered me. But being obliged to economize my working power, I will not go down to the foundations of our difference, on which we are not likely to convince one another; if we ever change it will rather be in consequence of the progress of our own minds. I will merely touch on a few points which drew my attention in reading your essay.
1. As to your argument, that our knowledge of our own power to move our muscles cannot be derived from experience, because to obtain that experience, we must already have voluntarily moved them. My way of meeting that difficulty is this. I believe, with Hartley and Professor Bain, that all voluntary motions were originally automatic, produced by the stimulus of sensation, without what we call volition. For the process by which an idea, or reminiscence in the mind, gains that power over our muscles which was at first possessed only by sensations, I must refer you to the authors I have named, especially Mr Bain “The Emotions and the Will”, who is by far the fullest. If you have time to read him, you will see that experience of the sequence between a thought or desire and a motion may very well be (and, as we think, must be) complete before the thought or desire grows into a will.
2. You say that there are only two things to which we attribute power: viz. intelligence, and matter in motion. But there are many cases in which we regard as a cause of motion, matter which is not in motion, or (if there be no matter not in motion) which does not produce other motion by its own motion, but independently of it. For instance, the sun causes the motion of the earth: but, though the sun is now known to have a proper motion, it is not by virtue of that motion that it attracts the earth: if it were immoveable it would do so equally. Just so a magnet makes iron move towards it by its mere proximity. True the magnet moves round with the earth’s rotation and revolves with it about the sun, but it would attract the iron just the same if those movements were suspended. So, again, heat and light are causes, and active forces: the modern opinion indeed is that heat and light are matter in motion, but they were just as much conceived and known as active forces before that opinion grew up. I think this consideration materially affects your theory, for the natural agencies which have always been conceived as powers, agree in nothing but in being the observed antecedents of motion or change.
Most of your arguments against my chapter on causation I have anticipated in the chapter itself: but
3. You misunderstand my expression “as long as the present constitution of things lasts.” You do not appear to see that the extinction of the sun’s light would not be, in my sense, a change in the present constitution of things. As long as all the properties of matter remain the same, and are governed by the same laws, no modification which those laws may produce in the concrete bodies surrounding us is a change in the constitution of things. Consequently I do not admit that we believe that “while the present constitution of things lasts night will invariably precede day”. It will only do so if the sun continues to give light, and if no other body of a similar nature comes into our region, or we into its region, of the universe. Night, though an invariable, is not an unconditional antecedent of day.
4. You say “As soon as we find that night can for a time exist without producing day, we perceive that it cannot be the cause of day.” Then sunrise is not the cause of day either; for the actual sunrise has taken place for some time without producing day, viz. the time necessary for a ray of light to travel over the intervening distance.
5. You say “if the whole aggregate antecedents are the cause of any effect, then, as at each instant the whole antecedents are the same at every point of space, the effects should be everywhere the same.” This, I think, you will see, is an oversight. The whole antecedents are not the same at every point of space; for, the antecedent condition of an effect is not the mere happening of an event somewhere, but its happening in a certain degree of proximity to the scene of the effect; and antecedents of this sort cannot be the same for any two points of space.
I throw out these remarks merely as matter for your own mind to work on. If they do nothing else, they will suggest answers from your point of view, and will help to render your side of the argument more complete.
It is unlucky that your visit to England should have occurred while we are away; for we shall not have returned by the time you mention, and I fear you are not likely to visit this side of the Channel before you recross the Atlantic: otherwise you would be warmly welcomed at our little place. Does the notice prefixed to your printed letter include me? if so, I will return it through Messrs Baring.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours sincerely
J. S. Mill
R. G. Hazard Esq.
1006.
TO JOHN MILLS
November 16, 1866.
Dear Sir,—
I have only just received your letter of the 15th in reply of mine. Your pamphlet reached me by the same post, my answer is therefore too late for the purpose for which you requested it. I am the more sorry for this, as you have thought it right to mention in a note that you had been told I had changed the opinion which you quoted from the last edition of my “Political Economy”, and I should have been glad if you had mentioned such a statement, you should have been able to contradict it. I hold to the passage you quoted in every respect; it still expresses my opinion as correctly as it did when I first wrote it.
I am faithfully
J. S. Mill
1007.
TO THOMAS HARE
Nov. 18. 1866
Dear Mr Hare
I have been in debt to you for two letters, I am ashamed to think how long: but when one is as busy as I am, and has also so many letters to write, the friends one values most are apt to be last served, if there is nothing in their letters requiring to be answered immediately. You, also, have been working hard, and with great efficiency, for and at the Social Science meeting. The ignorance of the very A B C of the subject which was shewn by the speakers on the other side, struck me even in the newspaper reports, and your letter shews that this ignorance is accompanied by a false opinion of knowledge. Lord Robert Montagu’s confounding your plans with the mode of election which is of all others most different from it, and most opposed to its principle, is very illustrative of the manner in which English politicians, especially of his class, make themselves acquainted with new ideas. They just snatch up some one feature—in this case, the voting for many candidates instead of only two—and then fancy they are masters of the whole thing. What I most want to say to you is this: There will, in all probability, be a Tory Reform Bill, and whatever may be its quality, no moving of amendments or raising of new points will in the case of a Tory bill be regarded by Liberals as obstructiveness, or as damaging the cause. Then will be the very time to bring forward and get discussed, everything which we think ought to be put into a good Reform Bill. I am anxious, therefore, to hear what, in your opinion, would be the best way of bringing your plan before the House in the approaching session. Perhaps the mode you mention, that of moving for a Committee, would do best; for as Disraeli will be glad to curry a little favour with the independent liberals, and not sorry to gain a little time, we have more chance of getting our Committee, than perhaps we should at a future time. If a Committee is granted, we will get Fawcett and any other friends put on it, and I will devote myself as much as I am able to working it, and extorting a real discussion of the plan from the witnesses. If you think this the best way, should the motion be for a Committee on your plan alone, or on representation of minorities generally?
I suppose you saw in how excellent a way Lord Hobart returned to the subject in his article on Bribery in the November McMillan. Mr Schuyler says in a letter I have just received from him, “I have been carefully reading Mr Hare’s book, and yours on Representative Government. For our country, I think Mr Hare’s plan would have to be modified so far as to confine the choice of members to districts of the country, like our present congressional districts—perhaps to States—and this because of the great extent of our country and the sparse population of most parts of it—” (He probably means that the people do not know the notabilities of any State not their own)—“Otherwise I can see no drawback to all the advantages it undoubtedly would give. I shall do what I can to bring it into public notice at home.”
With our kind regards
I am Dear Mr Hare
Ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
1008.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN
Nov. 21. 1866
Dear Sir
My daughter, from whom you have already more than once accepted articles, has written one on the claim of women in independent circumstances to the suffrage, which she sends by this post and places at the service of the Westminster Review if you are disposed to insert it. It is written, as you will see, with a practical object, to aid the parliamentary movement which will probably be made in the next session, and it takes, therefore, mainly the constitutional ground and that of analogy to English institutions, taking only incidental notice of the broader and higher principles on which the claim may be rested. It is desirable that the article, if accepted, should be in the January number, as the number following may perhaps be too late for the immediate occasion. I am
Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
Dr Chapman
1009.
TO ROBERT WERE FOX
Nov. 23, 1866
Dear Sir
On returning home the other day, I regretted to find that you and your ladies, after taking the trouble to come, and staying some time for the purpose of seeing me, had gone away disappointed: I should certainly have made an attempt to find you before you left Avignon, if it had not been already too late. The recollections left by my former intercourse with your family are too pleasant for me not to have pleasure in reviving them. I was sorry to hear that your visit to the South was for the sake of Miss Caroline’s health—I hope only by way of precaution. The winter climate of the South East of France is, I think, excellent for chronic weakness or delicacy, but inferior to many other of the resorts of invalids in case of actual disease, either pulmonary or bronchial: and whenever there is any facility in taking cold, great care is required. But Hyères, in the opinion of medical men, has in a less degree than Nice the defects which are common to both. At all events it will have, in your case, the advantage of being a very complete change; for the type of its climate is the very opposite of that of Cornwall.
I am afraid we shall have left this place for England before you turn your faces homeward; but either in England or here I should always be happy to see you, or to serve you in any way in my power. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
1010.
TO HERBERT SPENCER
Dec. 1. 1866.
Dear Sir
Dr Cazelles, a very intelligent medical man, residing at St. Giles, near the mouth of the Rhone, who has translated (excellently well, as far I am competent to judge) one of the principal writings of Moleschott, and has just finished translating my book on Hamilton, proposes, if you will give him permission, to translate your First Principles, and your Psychology. His ultimate scheme is rather an extensive one—to publish in French the whole series of the Association Psychologists, from Hartley downwards, beginning with you and Bain: and he has the consent of Germer Baillière, the publisher of the series of Philosophie Contemporaine, to publish translations of Bain and you by Dr Cazelles. I have formed a very favourable idea of his capacity; his philosophical opinions are completely of the Experience school, and I know by my own case that he does not linger over what he undertakes, but sets about it with a will, and gets through it. Dr Cazelles means to write to you himself, and will most likely send you his translation of Moleschott. Unless you have already some competent person in view, I do not think you would be likely to regret having accepted Dr Cazelles’ proposal.
I am Dear Sir
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
Herbert Spencer, Esq.
1011.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN
Dec.2.1866
Dear Sir
Many thanks for your letter. My daughter intended all along to insert a heading in the proof. She had some thought of heading the article with the Report of the General Committee of Petitions in which the Ladies’ Petition was printed: but we have not the series of those Reports by us, and we do not know which of them is the one that contains it.
I am sorry to hear that you are in any difficulty about the Review, and should be very glad to hear further about it. Knowing how little support there is for a Review of advanced opinions, I have always thought it eminently honourable to you that you should have been able to carry it on for so many years, and to make it as good as it has been through all that time. I am
Dear Sir
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
Dr Chapman
1012.
TO GEORGE GROTE
Dec. 2, 1866
My dear Grote—
I am very happy that you think my objection to being proposed for the Senate fair & reasonable. With regard to Spencer, Bain’s judgment will be a great help to you in the matter. I have not seen very much of Spencer, but what I have seen adds to the favourable side of the impression his writings make on me. I am not inclined, from anything I know, to consider him as on the whole disposed to magnify his differences from others whose philosophical opinions are allied to his own. He did so in the case of Comte, whom he knew very imperfectly. But in his controversies with me it is rather I who have magnified the differences, & he who has extenuated them. With regard to his reputation, no doubt it has not yet reached its height, but it is constantly growing. His is the rising philosophical name at the present & will probably stand very high ten years hence—& it is rather with a view to the future than to the present that additional thought is wanted in the Senate.
I have read several of the attacks on the Council about Martineau with much disgust at their extreme unfairness. There was, however, in the Morning Star of Nov 28th a leading article on the subject, as good & as much to the point as if it had been written by one of ourselves. In case you have not seen it, I inclose the article. Though the writer has evidently seen my letter to Martineau, I have no idea who he is. It may be the editor, Mr. Justin McCarthy, who, judging from two articles which he wrote [long?] ago in the W.R., on Voltaire & on Buckle, is a man of very considerable ability & very good opinions.
1013.
TO ALEXANDER VANCE
Dec. 2, 1866
Sir
I am obliged to you for your book. I have not had time to read more than the Introduction, but that is enough to convince me that your idea is a good one, and that you have done a useful thing.
I am Sir
Yours very sincerely
J. S. Mill
Alex. Vance Esq.
1014.
TO JOHN CHAPMAN
Dec. 6. 1866
Dear Sir
My daughter has put a heading to the article, and returns the corrected proof to your address by this post. She would be much obliged to you if you would allow twelve separate copies to be made up (at her expense) and sent to her here, as early as convenient.
I am Dear Sir
yours very truly
J. S. Mill
Dr. Chapman
1015.
TO THOMAS HUGHES
Dec. 18. 1866
Dear Mr Hughes
The idea of exhibiting in detail the practical need of reform, and answering the objections to it, in a volume of short essays, seems to me a very good one. If as well executed throughout, as from the persons engaged in it, some parts of it are sure to be, there is reason to hope that it will not only help Parliamentary Reform in the coming session, but will also hoist the flag of a future party of practical reformers, in anticipation of the time for following Parliamentary Reform to its consequences. It is impossible, however, that I should write anything for the collection, as I have work in hand that will require all my time up to the opening of Parliament.
With regard to the two departments for which I am asked to recommend writers, No 4 of the A series will, I think require to be divided. For Poor Law and Sanitary Reform, Mr Chadwick is the right person, if he can be prevailed on: if not, he is the person most competent to recommend some one else. For Municipal Reform, I should propose my constituent Mr James Beal, who has paid great attention to the subject, and understands it well: or, failing him, perhaps Mr Horton. 9 C, “the House of Commons and Taxation”, I think I would omit altogether. There is no longer much to complain of in the conduct of the House of Commons, under the guidance of Mr Gladstone, on this subject; and any one who took it up with that idea, would probably do so on the wrong principles of the Liverpool Financial Association. The worst things the House of Commons is now chargeable with on the subject of taxation, are the non-extension of the Probate Duty to real property, and the levying of the Succession Duty, in case of settled property, on the life interest only: and these points, I think, would come in better, à propos of something else.
No 1 of the B series, which was destined for me, would be an excellent subject for Mr Goldwin Smith.
I think you would find Professor Cliffe Leslie a valuable coadjutor. He is an excellent popular expositor of scientific thought, one of our best political economists, and has thought much and well on several of the proposed subjects, the land laws being one.
If I think of anything else worth writing, I will write again. I am
Dear Mr Hughes
very truly yours
J. S. Mill
1016.
TO GEORGE GROTE
Dec. 25. 1866
My dear Grote
I am much obliged to you for giving me the history of the struggle which ended in the appointment of Robertson. “Those who exerted themselves to get the professorship suppressed because their candidate was rejected, have certainly given their measure by it, and a very wretched one it is.” As Helen said when she read your letter, it is like the Judgment of Solomon: we see on which side the real case for the institution and for the subject is; for there is probably not one of us who would not have voted for Martineau rather than lose the professorship altogether. I am truly happy that you were sufficiently well supported to avert either result.
I do not know whether the younger men are, as you think, inferior to those who were formed between 1820 and 1832; it is hardly possible to judge until they shew what they are when they reach the same age, for the more various culture of more recent times causes people to ripen slowly. We must not forget either, that your experience and mine of the older set includes the very best of them—those who were formed under the Benthamic influence. There was, in general, Kimmerean darkness then, beyond the region to which that influence, directly or indirectly, extended.
I have got through fully three fourths of the revision of the Hamilton for the new edition. I have corrected some minor matters; but the wish you expressed, on Hamilton’s account, that some one might be able to clear him from a part of the inconsistencies and other errors laid to his charge, has not been realized to the extent that might reasonably have been expected. Mansel, in particular, is perpetually crying out that I have misunderstood Hamilton, but the points on which he makes out even a plausible case of misunderstanding are extremely few and small. Some of the new matter I have inserted will, I think, add to the intrinsic value of the book, independently of repelling objections.
Among the books I have had occasion to read in connexion with the subject is one lately published by Chapman and Hall, called “Inquisitio Philosophica, an Examination of the Principles of Kant and Hamilton by M.P.W. Bolton,” which is on our side, and attacks Mansel, and which I think you would like very much. The writer is a scholar, well read in the history of philosophy as well as in philosophy itself, is particularly good at stating correctly and clearly both sides of a case, and though he does not always profess to decide between them, shews plainly enough that he holds with the inductive school, both in their philosophy and in its consequences. I have mentioned his book to Bain.
In referring to the article in the Westminster, on Hamilton and me, am I at liberty to speak of it, either directly or by a circumlocution, as yours, or, as attributed to you? Unless you would rather I did not, I should like to be allowed to do so, not only on account of the value of your expressed approval of the book, but for the sake of the opportunity of expressing my sense of that value.
I hope Aristotle is profiting by the termination of your troublesome and anxious contest.
With our kind regards to Mrs Grote, who I hope is now quite recovered, I am
my dear Grote
ever yours truly
J. S. Mill
1017.
TO EDWIN CHADWICK
Dec. 29. 1866
Dear Chadwick—
Let me begin by requesting you to thank Miss Chadwick very heartily from me for the trouble she took in writing to me as your representative. I am extremely sorry for the cause which rendered her aid necessary; most of all on your own account. The loss of what you would have written & done during the interval is also much to be regretted, but on the whole you, like myself, have had less than the average share of interruption in your work from ill health.
I have, as you know, always agreed with you as to the importance of introducing military drill into schools, though I should be a little frightened at it if I thought it would do what in your present paper you say it sometimes does—make the majority of the boys wish to be soldiers. There can be no doubt also that by this means the purposes of an efficient reserve would be attained without either the expense, the loss of productive power, or any other of the evil consequences of increased armaments. But for that very reason it will not be listened to by any of the Continental governments except possibly Italy. Those governments do not want a real defensive force; they want an aggressive force; they want to have the very largest body of adult soldiers ready for service anywhere, whom they can afford to pay, & your arguments will be of no avail except to the French & Prussian liberals to use, against their governments. In that respect they may be very useful & I think copies might usefully be sent to the Temps newspaper, to Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Carnot, Garnier Pagès, Lanjuinais, &c. and to Twesten, Schultze-Delitsch, Jacobi, & any other of the best liberals in the French & Prussian chambers. It was a good idea sending a proof to M. Wolowski for the Institute & if you were to give him a copy for M. Rouher there might be a chance of Rouher’s reading it. The idea of employing soldiers in civil work is not new in France, & it has been much discussed. You will find many minds prepared for it. I do not at present see any service that I can be of in the matter, at least by writing. I do not understand military subjects & can carry no authority upon them. But I will most willingly move for your paper & may take that opportunity of speaking my mind on the matter as a question of education. Hoping for a better account of you before long I am
Titles (by Subject) 
